Felix Culpa
by xelay
Summary: "Let's find it…together." Mavis and Zeref went on a quest to break the curse of contradiction together. But whether love would lead to miracle or tragedy, neither could have anticipated. (The AU where Mavis lived.)
1. Fear not this night

**Synopsis:**

"Let's find it…hand in hand."

Zeref and Mavis went on a quest to break the curse of contradiction together. But whether love would lead to miracle or tragedy, neither could have anticipated.

(The AU where Mavis lived.)

 **Warnings for suicidal ideation/attempted suicide and implied self harm throughout the story.**

* * *

Chapter 1

Mavis woke to swathes of gray-blue, sliced apart by the dark branches above. The surroundings were duly dull in the cold light, as if the world had been distorted through a screen of smoke and water.

Dry grass crinkled beneath her hands as she stood. There was a tight gnaw in the pit of her stomach, a persistent reminder of hunger.

She had not needed to fight the urge to sustain herself once the first few weeks had passed. If she kept at it for long enough, maybe her body would waste itself away, eventually.

It was a thought too optimistic for the six months she had already lived, but it lingered.

She moved without aim or direction, guided by nothing but fear gnawing at her heels, warning her to stay away, _away_ , far from anywhere they could find her.

It was callous to think that the deaths of strangers would hurt less. But it was also the truth.

She walked. One step after another as daylight toiled itself into nightfall.

The air was chilly. Her clothes were little more than rags hanging on her frame.

There was no dispelling the burn of eyes on her. It had been terrifying when she thought it was real, and worse when she realized it wasn't.

Dead eyes. The hushed sound of birds falling, limp from their perches. The thump of a body hitting the ground. Men, women, children. Dead eyes, all of them, countless of them, watching in the distance.

She walked when she did not sleep. The ground turned from smooth earth to sharp rocks to hot stabbing knives.

Her feet were bleeding. They healed again.

She kept walking. She walked until she was too tired to stop walking, and then she walked some more.

Eventually, it dulled into to something insensate.

Dead woods turned to living ones and living ones to dead again. Her feet were bleeding. They healed again.

Night fell.

There was a wide ditch surrounded by a grove of trees. A lake might have slumbered here, once, before drying out. She turned away, but she did not feel like walking, anymore.

She saw a bower. She sat under it and tucked her limbs around herself.

She did not sleep.

Day came. She did not feel like walking.

Night fell.

Day came.

The hunger was gone.

Night fell.

She was still tired.

* * *

Day came.

Mavis woke up.

* * *

For a brief, liberating moment, she could not remember.

Where she was. What she was doing.

Who…

She wondered if this was yet another dream, creeping through fitful sleep.

This one was new.

Zeref was standing before her. He was dressed the exact same way he did the last time she saw him, with nary so much as a rip or a stain on the robe and toga he wore. It was a far cry from the pitiful state she was in.

"I've been looking for you, Mavis," he said.

"Zeref…" Her voice was rusty from disuse.

When had she seen him last? A year, or perhaps more? She had only started counting the days after she stopped eating. It felt like decades.

"You look terrible," he observed.

Mavis stared up at him. He was smiling, and his eyes were not dead, but they were not quite alive, either.

"I haven't eaten anything for half a year…but I am still alive..." She rasped.

"Such is the curse of Ankhseram," Zeref informed her bluntly. He was not smiling anymore, his expression set in one of rare intensity. "You cannot die even if you were beheaded."

But Zeref had come to look for her. He had taught her most of the magic she knew. He was one of the most powerful mages in history.

He could do something about this. He could…

The plea dragged itself out of her, broken.

"I beg you…please…kill me…"

"I can't," he said. Regret flashed across his face, the first sign of emotion that broke through his calm demeanor.

Mavis sat there, numb and uncomprehending. For a moment, the words refused to sink in.

She watched as he went on to tell her of his own experience – as he tried to convince her that eventually, she would find a way to cope with this, just as he did, if only because they had no other choice.

But he could not even convince himself.

With its simple law of killing all that he held even the slightest care for, this curse had turned his own mind against him. She looked on, stunned into silence as he spoke of peace and destruction in the same breath, unable to remember any of it in his next.

He could no longer see the contradictions in his own thoughts. She could...

For now.

Zeref stopped smiling. His pressed his hand to his face, as if trying to shield himself.

"I want to see my brother again…

"I want to destroy him…

"No, please destroy me…"

There was no escape from the hell of one's own thoughts.

She should be terrified. This… _this_ was what she would become. She could not imagine living like this, for years, for centuries, as a shadow of the person she once was, helpless as the mind she so prized slowly tore itself apart.

He had seemed sad, the first time they met. She never knew just _how_.

Zeref knelt before her, hunched in on himself.

The world rejected them.

He was hurting…

But he was not alone.

It felt like such a natural thing to do, in that moment, that Mavis never once brought herself to question it in all the years which came after. Anyone with any degree of compassion would have done the same, had they been there – had they seen the depth of agony another soul could possibly be in.

She reached out.

"I will accept all of you!" She grasped his shoulders, hard, willing him to believe. "There must be a way of breaking this curse. So don't give up…"

The pain in his expression turned into shock – disbelief – and finally, touched comprehension.

"Let's find it…hand in hand," Mavis said, smiling through her tears.

"Mavis…"

Zeref leaned into her, pressing his head into the crook of her neck. It was not a loving embrace, safe in the knowledge of its own security. This – it was loneliness, mad in desperation and bleak in the simplicity of it, down to every inch of contact.

He was…warm. She relaxed in the hold. The black silence veiling her mind lifted, for an instant, replaced by a sense of peace. It was a serene contentment, as if there was nowhere else in this world she would rather be; as if they were made to fit like this, despite how utterly broken they were.

"I have never been treated so kindly…" His voice shook. "By anyone…"

"Surely not," she whispered, not wholly aware of what she was saying anymore, searching for the first words she could find to soothe. "You merely forgot…"

"And I have never loved anyone this much in my life..."

She was gaunt from malnourishment, her dress was filthy and tattered, and her hair was clotted in tangles from dirt and grime.

But he looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

Her heart did not flutter from her nerves, the way it had in their last meeting. It merely paced, counting the seconds passing them by as they held on to each other.

His eyes were alight with hope, soft with gratitude, and more alive than she had ever seen.

She closed her eyes.

The kiss landed on her lips, gentle as snow falling.

A gust rustled through the clearing like a sharp exhale.

Mavis felt the instant every life was reaped from the place without seeing it.

* * *

The air blowing on her face was warm. Light phased through her eyelids.

Mavis tried to fling an arm over them. Her hand pricked with pins and needles, refusing to move.

It was not morning. The sky was burning, with a warm intensity that implied that this was the last of daylight, rather than the first of it.

She struggled to open her eyes. There was a fire beside her, burning away the damp chill of the evening.

"You're awake."

"…Zeref?"

Fully awake now, she scrambled up from the ground to take in the sight properly. Zeref sat a distance away from her, with the fire between them. His eyes were fixed unnervingly on her.

The fire seemed to have been started magically, with little smoke from the flames, but his face turned blurry and distorted through the heated air every now and then.

"...You're real," Mavis stuttered the first thing that came to her mind. Her mouth was dry, and a cloying thickness stuck to her throat. "Did I just…fall asleep?"

She shuffled towards him when he made no sign of approaching.

Zeref hesitated before replying.

"You were tired," he said at last, looking away from her and into the fire. "You haven't been sleeping much, have you?"

Mavis shook her head. She knelt beside him and reached a tentative hand towards his face. His skin was uncomfortably warm.

Or it could merely be that her hand was uncomfortably cold.

He did not flinch away. Gingerly, he placed his hand over hers, holding it against his face before she could drop it. His eyes slid closed, and he let out a stuttered breath.

"Is something wrong?" She asked. A sudden concern took her over.

Zeref shook his head, opening his eyes. There was a familiar blandness to his expression.

"I thought…" he muttered. His hand tightened against hers. "No, it's fine. Nothing's wrong, Mavis."

He didn't sound fine. Mavis stared at his face. The last thing she remembered was her promise. The ghost of the last kiss shared between them still lingered on her lips.

Her face heated from the memory. The sky was burning, still, and it might have happened as soon as minutes ago. She just could not shake off the feeling that she had missed something monumental in the time since, but for the life of her, she could not figure out what it was.

Zeref lowered her hand, shifting his eyes to focus on her again. "Have you thought of what we will do, now?"

Strange that he would ask her that, when he had been the one telling her of Alvarez. She saw it for what it was, now – a standing invitation.

"I'll go to Alvarez with you," Mavis said without hesitation. "We can figure out where to go from there."

"…All right." The agreement was not reluctant; merely hushed.

"Is it at war, now?" She asked, realizing as she did that she knew nothing of the continent, and no news of recent. The year had gone by without leaving a single mark on her, slow and fleeting in equal measures. This was what it felt like to be stranded by time.

Strategizing through a war could bring her curse under control again. Within her, something akin to hope keened at the very thought. Yet at the same time, she found herself rebuking the idea instantly. The sight of bodies strewn haphazard across the ground was too fresh on her mind. She did not know if she could ever find it in herself to take so many lives into her hands again.

In all honesty, she was not sure which answer she would have preferred.

"I have not returned there for some time," Zeref said. "They have kept in contact with me. I have not responded, of recent…but they would not start a war without my presence."

"You are certain?" She asked. It seemed illogical for him to hold such confidence, but he would know better.

He nodded. "Tomorrow," he said. "We can leave tomorrow."

Without warning, he closed his arms around her. Surprised, she returned it. There was nothing discomforting about the hold – quite the opposite – but the sense of foreboding from before spiked through her again.

"Zeref…" she tried. "What's wrong?"

His hand tightened around the back of her head, for a moment, before it slackened.

"Don't worry," he said, smiling. "There's nothing wrong, Mavis."

His voice was even, but there was something hollow about the way his words were strung together.

"All right," she conceded, knowing there was nothing more she would get out of him for now.

She could not help but think there was something hollow about his smile, too.


	2. Though shadows fall

Chapter 2

Moonlight spilled across the tranquil lake, gossamer white. Mavis gathered her hair in both hands and wrung the water out of it. The dress she had conjured was soft against her skin.

She had forgotten what it was like to feel so clean.

She did a slow spin before the water, observing her reflection. An overwhelming sense of déjà vu took her over at the sight. It felt like looking through a mirror of time at the person she used to be.

The last time she put on this outfit, she had been young – with hope, with ambition, with all of future laid out for her taking.

Zeref sat cross-legged behind her, eyes closed in meditation. It was something she recalled seeing him do on occasion, during the days he was teaching them. Considering how she spent her childhood, outdoor maintenance was possibly the last niche of knowledge she expected to learn from him. But terrain manipulation was a useful skill, in any case.

She had been watching him for most of the evening, trying to catch a hint of what had transpired from before. But whatever oddities there had been in his behavior, they seemed to have evaporated entirely.

"Do you remember this?" Mavis asked in a low voice. "I came up with it, when I was learning magic from you.

"When I saw you for the first time, I thought fate must have sent you to me for a reason. Back there, you helped all of us to fulfill our destiny. I was…grateful," she muttered. Her hands skittered down to bundle the fabric of their own accord. "You are intelligent. Powerful, but…discrete and cautious about it, and – and _kind_ , despite what you've gone through."

 _Everything I aspired to be._

"I suppose I didn't actually know what it meant to be a black mage, at the time…" She smiled ruefully. "But I really do like this dress."

Zeref dipped his head in silent acknowledgement.

"You look good in it," he offered with a small smile.

Mavis had the distinct impression that he would have said the same thing, in all sincerity, even if she were the ugliest hag in the world wearing the rags she did an hour ago.

She was not sure whether to be touched or annoyed by the thought.

"Thanks anyway," she said, settling for amused.

The befuddled look he gave in response was priceless.

Her hair hung loosely down her back. She gave up on sorting it out for the night when her hand ended up tangled in it, mid-way through. This, like everything else, could wait till morning.

"Can I?" Zeref murmured from behind her.

She nodded, closing her eyes. He threaded his fingers through her hair, gentle despite his clear unfamiliarity with the motion, untangling each knot with patience. She leaned back against him, trying to memorize the sensation; tried to imagine the shape of his hands. He had the hands of a scholar, or maybe an artisan, all long fingers with jutting joints.

His grip was not as calloused as her own, when he had held her earlier. She smiled inwardly at the realization. Whatever he did as a child, he had not been quite as adventurous as her.

But those hands, like hers, had killed more than they could ever account for without intention; had taken so many lives that death was their only respite from their conscience.

Neither of them brought up her promise. It was not for fear of failing to deliver it, but for the peace of this moment, shared in simple intimacy rather than mutual suffering. She did not want to contemplate the possibility of ever finding a solution, when they could have this – fragile and transient and not entirely real as it seemed.

Magic was vast as knowledge came, and there were obscure branches she did not yet have the chance to set her mind upon, for all of her diligence. Hope was still rooted in a part of her, and frail as it might be, it was also something impossibly tenacious.

But would Zeref, who never found an end despite the centuries he had lived, even care? However they were, wherever they went – as long as she stayed by his side, it would have been more kindness than he ever knew in his life.

Perhaps, in the months and years to come, she would decide the same. And they would have to be enough.

Mavis inhaled, deeply, and reminded herself she did not need to think of them as allies. They had chosen to be something else, something _more_.

Was it truly a sin, to love as the killers they were?

She spun around. Zeref's motions slowed to a halt. He lowered his hands.

"What's wrong?" He asked. There was nothing but gentle concern in his words.

He sounded so – impossibly – _calm_. At peace.

She had the sudden urge to laugh, or cry, say _nothing,_ throw the word back in his face – say _everything –_ but he _knew_. He knew pain to the frightening intensity she could not even begin to imagine, _he_ _knew_ – and if she acted on that impulse, she knew she would only come to regret it.

"I ran off before we finished that conversation," she muttered.

Zeref tensed visibly, catching on to what she was referring to without any further specification on her part.

"…I am sorry," he said, after a brief beat of silence.

"You told me the truth." He had made no attempt to sugarcoat anything for her. In retrospect, that had been the sensible choice.

If only she had listened.

"I shouldn't have put it the way I did. I…and I…"

He seemed to be struggling to place even more into the apology. Mavis couldn't see why he needed to.

She hadn't wanted to believe him, then. There were times after the encounter where she had wondered if he hadn't been so harsh solely out of the desire to contradict what she had told him.

That he was a better person than he believed himself to be.

She still wondered that, now.

"You warned that I needed a decade to master Law. But I was desperate. I knew there would be consequences, and I was – I was ready to live with them. I just thought…I believed it would be worth it, as long as I could save my friends and everyone in Magnolia."

Mavis swallowed. She was lying through her teeth, and she suspected he knew it.

 _Annihilate what is evil and preserve what is good, at the user's discretion._ It was the only way to destroy what was possessing Yuriy without killing him in the process.

But Law must be cast at the expense of the caster's life energy. Eleven years ago, she cast it every expectation that it would cost her her very life.

Instead, she had lived to see the consequences: that the costs were higher than anything she had anticipated – anything she could possibly be ready to _live with_.

But she did save them.

She couldn't regret it.

She shouldn't.

There was something different about the way his was looking at her, from how he did a moment ago – no less compassionate, yet harder and with far more gravity. It felt almost like he was looking up at her, somehow, even though she was a full head shorter than he was.

"I taught you the fundamental theories without so much as giving a demonstration. Yet you used Law successfully on your first attempt, mere days after learning it…" Zeref muttered. "You truly are a prodigy."

Mavis shook her head. "I passed out after casting the spell. They found a specialist for me, afterwards. My body would not mature anymore. He said that it was a side effect caused by casting the incomplete form of that magic…and we believed it."

"He had no idea what was happening to you," Zeref said brusquely. "Casting Law on that magnitude should have landed you with the magical deficiency disease. When you told me about what you used it for – and not only were you alive, in good health, you…" He trailed off. "It would have been a slow and painful death, if you hadn't been cursed."

 _It would have been a kinder fate_.

Not for him, perhaps, but one could not miss what they never knew they could have.

The unvoiced statement sank in between them. When he spoke again, his eyes were dark with regret.

"I should never have taught that spell to you. I thought…with your aptitude, there was no doubt you would have mastered it. And this knowledge, lost for centuries, could find a way to survive… If I had known then that you would use it for – that you would be condemned just for –"

"It meant that I had a way of saving my friend, and I succeeded," Mavis cut him off. "I don't regret it."

She tried to ignore the feeble voice inside her that questioned, yet again, if the life she had bought her friend was worth a fate worse than death in his steed.

But it would not be quieted anymore.

"…Why?" It was difficult to keep the accusation out of her voice. "Why this curse? Why does it even exist to begin with?"

Zeref looked back at her, unflinching as he took in every word, as if he had been expecting the question. His expression was blank, but the solemnity in his voice was unmistakable.

"The first time we met, you named my curse," he said. "I was surprised. No one had ever done so before."

" _Ars Moriendi_ ," Mavis replied, softly. "It's where I read of it."

"So that book is still around..." Surprise entered his features. "You read all of it…?"

"I don't believe for a second that you read nothing of the sort at that age," Mavis said, smiling slightly. His eyes widened for a brief moment, before he gave a conceding smile in return.

"It was about dark magic, and probably above my level, but there was nothing macabre to it. In fact, I found it a rather interesting read. I didn't believe there are distinctions to the nature of knowledge; merely how it is applied."

Zeref shook his head. "Some things are not meant to be known," he refuted quietly.

It was a point that had already occurred to her, with the benefit of hindsight. In retrospect, it had been too simplistic of her to separate fact from facility entirely in her youth, without considering how slippery the path of in-between could be. Knowledge of the questionable kind meant options that could never be unlearned, open paths that could never be closed again – and the temptation to stray was strongest precisely in times when will was at its weakest.

But to fight monsters, one would first need to know them. Every victory in her life came with a price. Even then, she knew.

Mavis stared down at her hands.

"Resurrecting the dead defies the very laws governed by Ankhseram, the deity of Life and Death. Ankhseram's Curse, also known as the Curse of Contradiction, is cast upon the perpetrator: the more one appreciates life…" She stopped, mid-recitation, to watch his expression. "I never believed something like that could actually exist, until I met you."

Silence was her only reply.

"Yuriy wasn't dead," she whispered, caught between appeal and protest. "He was possessed, but he wasn't…I couldn't just leave him to that fate. I wasn't trying to resurrect the dead, I just wanted to save him..."

"I am sorry," Zeref said, at last. There was a helpless resignation to his words, as if he was inwardly flailing for what he should say to her, and drawing a blank. His hand reached towards his neck, tugging unconsciously at the pendant he was wearing. "I did. Try to resurrect the dead. The curse happened years before I succeeded."

"You – _succeeded_?" She stared at him, incredulous.

He gave a smile devoid of humor. "I had been working on it for a very long time."

"Was it…" A guess came to her almost immediately. She swallowed the impulse to ask before it could leave her.

If Zeref had noticed, he did not choose to pick up on it.

"I didn't know the consequences at first," he elaborated. "And after that…I just could not give up on what started me down it. It still took me some time to get there, though. I was…distracted, and other projects occupied my attention."

"You…wrote the book?" Mavis muttered, more in desperation of saying something than in genuine question. It felt like a grossly inadequate response to what was possibly the most understated way of saying _I was trying to kill myself, and failing_.

"I authored _Ars Moriendi_ , based on the mythology I was taught and experiences of my own," he confirmed. "As for its purpose…maybe I was trying to make sense of what was happening to me, at first. And then…maybe it was intended as a warning...?" He paused, rejecting the idea. "No, nothing so altruistic."

The book had seemed innocuous enough when she found it, dusty and untouched in the attic of the library on Tenrou. The language, while archaic, had been largely readable. It was not something written for its contemporary audience.

"You are not sure why you wrote it?" She probed, cautiously. His sanity wasn't something hanging on by a thread; that much she had deduced. Rather, it had looped back and twisted into something labyrinthine, with knots that could be undone to read his thoughts with greater clarity, but also threads that would unravel the entire façade of functionality if tugged on.

"It was probably just a way to pass the time," he answered. This seemed to fall into the former, at least. "I wrote and translated more things than I could keep count of. This was one of the earlier ones…and it happened to find its way to you."

"For what it's worth," she said, "I'm glad it did."

How would she have reacted when she first saw him, if she did not know the killing was beyond his control? Fear, definitely, and perhaps anger and revulsion too, as countless before her no doubt did.

Zeref lowered his head, as if in silent contradiction to her statement.

"My state of mind hasn't been…stable, for most of what I can remember," he added, after a moment. "I tried to find ways of occupying it where possible. It's dangerous to leave your mind idle, in this state. At best, it spirals into despair. At worst…" He looked away from her. "I have told you, before. Most of the rumors you heard about me were true."

"And I told you, then, that I do not believe any of them," Mavis said firmly. "You made it possible for my friends and I to pursue our dreams, and protect the people dear to us. I believe in what I could see for myself. You are inflicted with a terrible curse, but you are a kind person at heart. You have no desire to hurt anyone."

She did not know what to make of the look he gave her, in response. There was a soft, startled gratitude to it – but beneath that, there was something else, too.

She had seen it before, back during her days as the Fairy Strategist. It was the kind of look one might give to a marooned platoon of soldiers, fighting a war they did not know they had already lost.


	3. Eyes close and heartbeats slow

Chapter 3

Dark. A muffled gasp choking out.

Mavis held her breath and listened for it, but the sound did not come again. A sudden glint of light caught her eye.

Through the crack between the debris, a single eye peered back at her.

 _She is dead._ A cold reminder shot through the back of her mind. _Dead for years – but –_

 _She is right here._

 _I can save her this time._

 _This time…_

The thought killed the last tendrils of logic, shocking her into activity. She tore at the debris.

It would not give. Blood trailed down her hands. It would not give. The sound of gasping started again, once, twice – softer, weaker.

 _She was dead._

It would not give. She was dead and she was going to die again because Mavis couldn't move, even when they had another chance, but –

 _Not again._

 _Not again not again please not again –_

The crack widened, as if in response to her plea. A finger came through it – and then a hand in the whole, pale and skeletal, bone white.

Mavis held on to it as if it were a lifeline – as if she was the one that needed saving rather than giving it, pulling with all her strength.

It would not move another inch. Desperation burned through her veins. She had done it before, she should be stronger than this – but her arms felt limp and heavy at her sides, refusing her every command.

A shadow fell over her.

A woman stood beside them, watching her struggle in futility.

 _Help me_ , she tried to say. Her lips would not move. There was only a strange, garbled sound, forcing its way of her throat.

The woman looked back at her, dispassionate, lifeless as a cutout where she stood. There was no expression in her face and her eyes were –

She had no eyes.

Realization slammed like a ton of bricks. The plea died on her tongue.

The force she was tugging against slackened, all of a sudden.

She looked down. There was a hand, still tight in her grip, but it –

Mavis screamed.

She did not know what was in the sound. Regret, or guilt. Maybe fear.

It snaked up to latch around her shoulder, fast as lightning.

Fear. But she would deserve it. Whatever was coming to her, she would deserve it –

Her voice did not work itself. What had felt like a scream was no more than a shuddering gasp as she jerked awake. Her arms were pressed beneath her, entangled in fabric, and there was a hand grasping her by the shoulder.

She shoved on instinct. Zeref backed away with his hands raised, apology in his face.

"I know," she muttered. Reality had already caught up with her. "I know I was dreaming."

"You are crying," he said cautiously.

Mavis tugged the blanket around herself and swiped at her face with the back of her hand. She did not know what to say.

"I killed her." It slipped out of her, unthinking. "Right after she asked me to name her son."

He did not ask about who it was. She stared into her lap to avoid the look he gave her. There was too much understanding in it to bear.

"Rita…she asked me to name her son."

His arms closed around her, tentative. She did not move away.

"I looked down at him, and he was smiling at me. Have you – have you ever seen what babies are like? His eyes – they were so trusting. They trusted me. I knew it, then. His mother trusted me with his life, all of his future…the whole of it."

His hold tightened on her, for a brief moment, like an affirmation.

"I held her hand, tried to let her know I understood…and then she – _she_ – "

Her voice broke. Tears swam before her vision.

Pain spiked through her chest, so sharp she felt as if she might be sick from it. She wanted to die. She wanted to shrivel away like everything did around them. She wanted for time to never move beyond this moment, ensconced in embrace from a world that would not stop dying.

He would let her. If she had asked for an eternity without ever saying the words, he would let her.

But the dam she had piled of grief and guilt had finally chipped away with its first trickle of truth. She could not keep the truth from leaving, any more than she wanted to stop herself –

"I ran," she said. "I ran from them. They didn't know what happened…they never knew it was me. I ran, and I couldn't stop killing…I tried to stay away but people still died, they just – _just kept dying_ –"

It was as if the long months of isolation, the horrors she witnessed had been a part of a nightmare, starvation and guilt eating at her until time itself turned surreal, enshrouding the world in haze.

But not anymore. When she looked back to the single moment it had all begun, now, all the moments that followed were brought back into sharp clarity, every jagged edge tracing itself out in her mind.

"I killed her," she whispered, again. And then it hit her – not a strike, but a terrible, haunting wrench inside of her, as confession turned into hard realization. "I can never see them again."

"You couldn't have known," Zeref said, quiet, but firm. "It's not your fault."

"You warned me," Mavis said. Her voice trembled. "You tried to warn me…"

"You didn't mean to kill her. It's not your fault."

"I didn't want to believe you –"

"You never wanted to kill anyone," Zeref said, every word hard in its conviction, willing her to believe. "Mavis. _It's not your fault._ "

Something in her broke at it – the part of her that had screamed when Zeira had left; when the light went out in Rita's eyes; when she woke again in the midst of a wasteland, a morning like a hundred others months into her starvation, and found herself still alive.

Her throat strained from the sound of it. It was real – incoherent, a sound of nothing but pure agony, crying harder than she ever did in her life.

It felt as if every nerve in her had been set alight. Her voice gave way before the scream died. She shook from the force of it like a leaf left to the wind, shuddering with sobs that continued wrecking through her frame, wrung out and scraped raw down to her very soul.

Her head was pounding in sync with her pulse. Spots danced before her eyes. She burrowed into the warmth around her with unthinking trust, hoping to dampen the sensation.

 _Rest. Just rest, now. It wouldn't hurt – it doesn't hurt as much, when you do._

 _Just rest._

She was not safe. She would never be safe from the people who were dead because of her.

And they would never be safe from themselves.

But they did not have to face it alone, anymore.

She did not remember how sleep had claimed her – only the darkness drawing around her like a cocoon, more peaceful and satiating than she could remember in a long time.

* * *

The forest capsuling them was eerily silent as the first omens of daylight tinted the sky. Hued in the soft light of dawn, the trees closest from the epicenter they were stood bare and lifeless, their shadows almost indiscernible against the grey backdrop of woods.

There was a paradoxical kind of calmness to the desolation, solely in the fact that the dead could not die again.

The mills of gods ground finely. With a shared curse, they brought two lives in completely separate worlds to a converging crossroad.

 _Is this what you want?_

The remains of the fire sat a distance away, burned out through the night. Zeref was sitting beside her, eyes set on the changing sky.

He turned at the sound of her movement. There was unmistakable affection in his eyes, warm and open.

 _No._

She remembered the palpitation of her heart, the heat rising in her cheeks the last time she had met him. It had been a pleasant surprise – the gratitude and admiration she once held having turned to something more in that encounter. Understanding. Desire for closeness. She felt drawn to him in a way she had never been drawn to anyone else before.

She remembered how the warmth of that memory had been replaced by abject terror seizing her soon after. How she was so haunted by all that had died by her hand – directly or otherwise – she begged him to kill her the moment she saw him again.

Every trace of innocence in that infatuation was gone, scattered like ashes in the wind on a funeral pyre.

Yet, from there, she had proposed another path for them, meaning every word she gave.

She had loved, once. And she found that she loved, still, even after all that she had lived through. But in that instant she offered it to him, Zeref had fallen a precipitous drop into deep waters, without so much as flailing on the way on his way down.

This was not a fate she would wish on anyone, not even her worst enemies – not even Blue Skull, who destroyed her childhood home and took the life of her first friend.

 _Tomorrow_ , she reminded herself. Staying here to languish together seemed tempting, but it was not the route they had agreed on, nor what would take them anywhere. They needed to move on, and keep moving, lest they never found the will to do so again.

She gathered her composure with a deep breath, and asked, "How will we get to Alvarez?"

Fiore had lifted the embargo on the ports after the merchant wars, but the normal means of travel were without a doubt beyond their access. But from what Zeref had mentioned to her, he was evidently able to travel between continents at will.

"Teleportation is my usual method of travelling between Alakitasia and Ishigar. Have you ever…?"

She hadn't.

"I can take you along," he said, catching the look on her face. "But the spell is unstable when the curse is active. Across the continents is difficult for a first attempt, even with affinity for this magic..."

He could make up for it with experience, but she couldn't. And if they missed their mark, the best they could hope for was landing in the middle of the ocean rather than a crowd in a densely populated town.

"If –" Zeref seemed about to propose something, at that, only to cut himself off. "No. You can't..."

"What can't I do?" She latched on instantly.

"It's nothing." He shook his head, dropping the idea entirely.

Mavis pressed on. "What were you thinking about?"

"It's not – I didn't think…" He relented, when her persistent look hardened. "You can't enter the state of mind…the state where you stop having any appreciation for life."

The curse would not affect them in that state. But the way he put it…

She stared at him. "You can enter it _at will_?"

"No!" Zeref cringed visibly. "It just – _happens_."

"… _How_?" She breathed out the word slowly, trying to make certain that it was free of any trace of aggression before it left her.

"You are afraid for every life you may take, and guilty for every one you _did_ , but…but there's a _point_." He paced a little where he stood, wiping a hand across his face roughly. "There is a breaking point, for anything. Past that point, you just wouldn't care, anymore. It's not about will. You simply… _can't._ "

It was understandable to her, in a sense – in the way colors were variegated in grey and sounds muted themselves through her senses, the way time lost all meaning as it inched on between night and day.

But it was not what he was describing. Not quite. The lives that surrounded her had never been safe from her curse.

"The thing is…" The empty smile, which she had come to associate with his darker moods, showed in his face again. "You don't care that you can't. You wouldn't even want to. Even when it had passed, I…"

He did not finish. Perhaps he had meant to say that he preferred it.

"But you still care," Mavis protested through numb lips. "You care."

Zeref lowered his gaze. "Not always," he replied, almost inaudibly.

"But…" she began. Realization stoppered the rest of her words.

He waited for those so-called states to happen. Not with deliberation, perhaps, but the mind found ways of defending itself – and somehow, through the dubious benefit of experience alone, he had learnt to fall along with it.

There was no telling how long, or how much _more_ she would need, for that extent of self-delusion.

"…Will it happen to me?" She had wanted to stay composed, to focus on the task rather than something he had no control over – but the question slipped out anyway, thin with trepidation.

"No," Zeref said quickly. "Don't think like that. We are only finding a place to fall back on. There is no need to – to go to such lengths."

It was more perturbing than comforting that he made it sound as if they had a choice.

"Teleportation," she muttered. An idea came to her, then. "Some topographies have denser concentrations of ethernano than others. They may have signatures suited to certain types of magic. If we can find one of these, a spell as such can be stabilized before its activation."

As soon as she said it, it occurred to her that he must have known this, too. It seemed improbable that the fact had simply slipped his mind.

There was a small frown building in his face. "…It is worth a try," he said.

"You sound reluctant about it," Mavis said, reaching out to even the crease between his brows. "Why? Are they beyond our access?"

"No, we can get there, I just…" Zeref hesitated. "I had come across such locations before, in the time I was wandering. We can travel there on foot. But some of them may not be as obscure they used to be. They may already have been found and disturbed."

"It's a risk we have to take," she said. Her heart had lifted as soon as he gave the first confirmation, and she tried not to dwell on how many more lives they would take in their course. "Let's start with the closest one, and see from there."

"It's a good plan," he agreed quietly, after a pause.

She noted, curiously, that it sounded almost more like a concession than an assent.


	4. Hear the whispering of the wind

Chapter 4

Zeref navigated the woodlands as if he could read entire maps off his mind alone, even though they seemed just as indistinguishable in every direction. Mavis had taught herself to navigate through nature throughout her childhood, but it still felt inadequate when held up to the ease he displayed. The terrain evened out as the days trudged on, dense thickets clearing into glades where the sun beamed down with ease. She lifted up her head, savoring the warmth beating down on her face.

They had lucked out, so far. No one else had crossed their path in the days past as they ventured deeper, leaving the surrounding wildlife their only victim. It was nothing worthy of celebration, certainly, but she was willing to count their blessings where she could.

A stream skipped downhill over jagged stones, stretching into a wide band of water before them that shimmered in the midday sun. Mavis stuck her feet ankle-deep into the water, heaving a sigh of contentment. Zeref knelt down on the bank beside her, shooting her a curious look.

"Have you always gone without wearing shoes?" He asked.

She shrugged. "I like going barefoot. It feels better."

He smiled at her in a way that suggested he was taking something he did not quite understand in stride.

"There's a leaf stuck between your toes," he said, pointing it out to her. There was a look of intense concentration in his face as he reached for it.

"Hey!" She protested, shrinking away from his fingers. "Stop tickling me!"

It was more reflexive than genuinely ticklish, but she couldn't stop giggling. She struck the water at him with her other foot.

"Wait," Zeref said. He did not seem to notice or care that she was drenching the front of his robes. "I'm almost –"

Mavis shoved him into the water.

It was only waist-deep, but he went in face-first, and emerged spluttering. Water trailed down his hair and onto his face.

"What was that for?" Confusion was plain in his voice.

She laughed and kicked at the water to make another round of splashes in response.

He stood there without trying to dodge, looking at a loss. "Was it something I said?"

"Have you never been in a water fight before?" She asked, surprised.

"I…I think," he said uncertainly. "But…"

"Well, watch out. I'm not going easy on you." Mavis smiled widely, before launching herself into the water.

The splash was loud enough to drown out whatever reply he had.

"Mavis –"

She scooped up more water and lobbed it in his face before he could finish.

"Hey, wait – you – stop it!" He protested between gasping laughter, trying to fend off her attacks with an arm over his face.

It was a nice sound.

Nicer than she had thought it might be.

The lapse in her attention cost her dearly, and she ended up with a face full of water herself.

Mavis swept her wet fringe out of her eyes.

"Oh, _now_ you're on," she said.

The ensuing battle was laughably one-sided. Even when he caught on to the tricks, he was hopelessly outmatched in terms of experience. Bogged down by their clothes, her size gave her an added advantage in addition to her home ground. She kept shifting her footing and catching him at a different angle he hadn't thought to defend.

At one point, he had given up on counterattacking entirely and resorted to taking refuge underwater.

"I can still see you," Mavis taunted. He couldn't hide forever. The moment he came up for breath, she would have the upper hand again.

A hand grasped around her ankle.

"That's _cheating_!" She shrieked.

She had underestimated him. This was bad. He had learnt her weakness and she had given him a fatal opening. There was no line of defense left for her.

In a desperate attempt to even the odds, she sacrificed her footing and threw her weight forward – to clutch at his hair.

Zeref released her foot instantly.

" _Ow_ – let go! Let go – you win, all right? _You_ _win_ –"

Mavis let go before it could really hurt, feeling a little guilty. She had played dirty and she knew it. If he had tried pulling the same thing against her, she would have lost in an instant. It would have been about twenty times easier, too, with her hair ballooning in the water around her as it did – if not for the fact that he had too much care to actually do it.

"You are one to talk about cheating," Zeref muttered as he was steaming her clothes dry on the bank.

"Higher," she replied cheerfully. "You have to dry my hair first, or my dress will just get wet again."

He obliged, though not without shooting her an amused look that was tempered with exasperation.

"It's the first time I've ever heard you laugh," Mavis said, deciding that she should. "It's a nice sound."

Zeref ducked his head in what seemed to be a sudden bout of self-consciousness. His hair was wet and plastered to his face, water still trailing down from it. Without thinking, she leaned forward and caught his lips with her own, light and playful.

He froze at the contact.

"I –" She began, smiling, but his expression was not one of surprise. It was the kind of closed-off, unfocused look used to stave off panic when he sensed the curse closing in.

"Zeref?" She rushed to apologize, uncertainty catching up with her at once. "I'm sorry. Are you…"

"No…it's fine." He shook himself out of the trance, still looking shaken. "It's – it's nice."

Mavis had the feeling that she had heard the words before.

He wasn't lying just to assure her; it was the truth, in a sense, after whatever had set him off had settled again. But before it did, she had crossed a line she shouldn't have with not even the faintest idea of how it came to be there.

"It wasn't," she protested. "You were – you were…"

 _Afraid._ He had been afraid. Of what, she could not know, but her gut churned at the realization.

"It's nice," he insisted. He reached a hand towards her face, combing aside the hair falling into her eyes, before settling on the back of her neck.

It was the same intimacy she had known and trusted, earnest and gentle in its entirety, when he brought their foreheads together to return her kiss. In that instant, with their shadows melded together and hearts beating in synchrony, it had been tempting to let her doubts go – so very tempting to let whatever had kept them from having this before fade into obscurity with its leave.

She never managed to make the question, in the end.

It was not for cowardice. An intuitive part of her had spoken in that moment – in more of a resigned whisper than a warning shout – that her prying would hurt worse, now, than what that unnamed secret had already done.

* * *

The dreams did not stop coming.

Mavis woke again with her heart hammering in her chest. It was still dark out, but there was a soft light emanating from the fire nearby.

Her eyes were wet. She tried to shove back the scream building up in her, placing her fist against her mouth as she shook.

She stopped doing it after the first few times. There was no point to it. Zeref always seemed to wake the same moment she did, regardless, and without fail. It was as if he had a way of sleeping so shallowly that it made no difference from lying awake. Not once had he shown even the mildest sign of irritation, in the midst of it or the morning after, even though she was certain he couldn't be getting any more sleep than she did.

It was nothing worse than what she already went through, over the year. But she could not stop herself from flailing, in terror as she drowned in them – in sheer frustration even as she laid awake after, thrumming with tension, exhausted but unable to fall back to sleep again.

Zeref held her where she lay, ramrod stiff and staring into space, leaning back against the solid weight of his chest.

It did not stop them, but it helped. It had a way of grounding her, in the disorientation that came after.

A strange envy of all things began intermingling with her gratitude and simmering guilt.

He was not plagued by nightmares the way she was. Their jaws did not come for him in the night to prey on his fears, to spit him out a lesser being in the mornings. Not even once, in all the time she had been with him.

It was not something she wanted to hold against him. It was merely – odd.

He had seemed so much more broken than she, at the time he found her. Yet he was the one offering more comfort to her, now. But she had not known, until then, that she would have strength to offer hope to another, either.

Her eyes grew heavy. The din of her thoughts was sharp as ever, the cross of bloodied blades sounding through the field of her mind as it awaited rest that would not

"Mavis."

She blinked her eyes open. The world came back into focus slowly.

The fire they made was still burning. She turned to look for the source of the sound.

Zeref was curled up beside her, breathing deep and even. He was fast asleep.

She could not remember what the dream was about, this time. But for once, she had woken without alerting him.

"Mavis…"

The whispering started again, almost too soft to discern. She pulled herself free gingerly and sat up, turning a wary eye towards the woods surrounding them.

"Show yourself," she ordered sharply, keeping a wary eye on the woods surrounding them as she tried to place the source of it. "Don't come any closer!"

A strange light was glowing faintly from one of the bushes. Darkness peeled back from it like a veil, and then she saw –

There was a figure, slim and familiar, partially obscured by the copse from where it stood.

Her throat went dry.

Zeira stared back at her. Her eyes glinted dark in her face. In this light, she did not look entirely human.

"Mavis…"

Zeira – or whatever being that had taken her form – sighed out the word. Her expression was set in grim earnestness, as if she held a terrible secret she was struggling to tell.

Mavis shook her head.

"You died," she whispered, staring down at her feet. "I let you go."

It took all of her willpower to stop herself from looking back at the image of her best friend.

If she did, she might never be able to look away.

It was an illusion.

It had to be.

Why would Zeira return, now, when she never did in the worst of Mavis's despair? Trapped and alone as she was over the past year, she would have accepted even the vaguest illusion of a friend.

"Mavis –" There was urgency in the word.

She woke to dark eyes looking back at her.

"I –" she gasped, breathless all of a sudden. She pushed herself to a sitting position, slowing her breaths.

"Nightmare?"

She ended up doing an odd motion of trying to nod and shake her head at the same time, stopped in the midst of it as she was swept into an embrace. The motion felt as natural as breathing.

His hand was warm on her back, rubbing slow circles into it. Some of the tension bled out of her body. She sank into the touch, hoping that it would last, and then hoping that it would last longer –

It did.

"I think…my mother used to do it for me," Zeref muttered, sounding slightly surprised at himself. "I didn't know I've forgotten."

It was pitched like a confession, as if a deep, secretive part of him was unfurling, all the seams cracking along with it.

"No," she corrected him gently. "You didn't know you remember."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

It hadn't really been what would count for a nightmare. Seeing Zeira again had been a shock, but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been.

No nightmare involving Zeira could come close to the true memories – of holding her limp body, terrified and alone and six; begging her to stay as she faded into the light, leaving not even the barest reminder of her existence behind.

But Mavis didn't need reminders. They had their final promise, what she honored in all the years that followed. Zeira was in her heart, as she always would be.

And that was where Zeira should have belonged.

"My friend," she muttered. "She is…she was dead. No, it wasn't – that happened long before the curse. I was only about six then, and we were living on Tenrou Island...a rival guild massacred everyone in my guild. Zeira got stuck in the rubbles. I managed to pull her out, and we ran.

"I thought we made it, for a moment. But then she…she stopped moving."

Zeref listened without comment. His eyes glistened in the firelight. Mavis paused at the sight, trying to remember where she had left off.

"I couldn't cope with it. I just – everyone else was dead. I just didn't want to be left alone. Zeira ended up living, as my friend…because I wanted her to, and I –"

"She was a subconscious illusion of your own creation?" Zeref interjected all of a sudden. There was uncharacteristic shock in his voice.

Mavis nodded, taken aback. The warmth from his touch had left her briefly at the inquiry, but returned almost immediately after, as if contrite for its desertion.

"No one aside from me could see or hear her," she elaborated, when he did not add to the statement. "For seven years, I never realized it. We…we had a good time together. But I met new friends, got to see the world beyond…and eventually, they told me the truth.

"I let her go. It was what she would have wanted, and I didn't have to be afraid, anymore. I wasn't alone anymore."

She smiled. The edges of her lips felt stiff with it.

Zeref let out a breath.

"It was a long time ago," Mavis said, after a moment. It felt important to say it. "I promised to keep her in my heart and move on. And I did."

"But it still hurts," he said, subdued.

"It does," she agreed. "Maybe not as much as it did, right then..." It was hard to think, to _measure_ – "Maybe..."

 _Until I lost them all, all over again._

"Will it ever stop hurting?" She asked, her voice small.

The hand on her back stilled, briefly, before returning to its repetitive motions as if the lapse had not occurred at all.

"I don't know," Zeref said, very quietly. "I'll tell you when I find out."

* * *

She slept through the remainder of the night, and the night that followed.

The nightmares did not come for him as they did her. Not even once, in all the time she had known him.

Time came at them with all its ravages, deep and invisible, and left without gifting even a modicum of its capacity to heal. Perhaps, if they had not been trapped as they were, they could have, in time –

But perhaps there were things in a person that could never hope to mend once broken, there were breaks in a soul that should be impossible to live through once inflicted – that were lived with, anyway, only for the lack of choice.


	5. In the solitude of our life

Chapter 5

Days passed slowly in their search, blurring into weeks. For the most part, exhaustion kept her from putting much effort into travelling even when the nights lifted. Weeks into wayfaring, with nothing but each other for company, Mavis found herself hoping, against her better instincts, that this fragile peace they shared would last.

Nature around them continued dying out, wide and indiscriminate. But she had seen worse – done worse, and despite herself, the worst pang of guilt she first felt had faded into regret and resignation.

They avoided the trade routes running through the outskirts of the forest, disused though those had seemed. To the north, mountain ranges in the far distance stood tall and foreboding with their ice-capped tips, dissuading anyone sane from venturing forth. Vegetation had thinned out almost completely around them, sparsely littering the grounds in the few nooks and crannies they had made a home for themselves. The sprawling valley beneath was cast in shadow by the surrounding cliffs, even well into the morning. Nothing but wild reeds grew for miles on end, huddled in tiny clusters against the blistering winds.

"We are almost there," Zeref said. "It would take us another day of travel, at most."

It should have cheered her. But she merely nodded without reply.

This place was a death sentence. Mavis knew the moment she set eyes upon the terrain. The side that seized the high ground would wear down both ammunition and morale in its entrapped foes with minimum force, until they were forced to make their final bid for escape. And this would be her vantage as it happened –where she would take in the clash of steel against steel with cold eyes, sending enemies and allies alike to their demises.

She recalled being unhappy, deeply so, in the aftermath. But it was difficult to remember why the guilt had not caught up with her sooner.

Certainly she must have regretted the necessity of bloodshed, even during the war. And even if she had not grieved for the loss of lives – not as hard as she should have, not at first – certainly she must still have loved her friends, with the whole of her heart and soul.

"It's not about love," Zeref muttered in reply.

She did not realize she had voiced out the question.

"What is the value of life to mean, then?"

"It is…" He hesitated, searching for the words to place, "It _is_ love, but more. It is looking at someone, and _knowing_. The possibility, the inevitability that you will lose them, some day. Even the kindest of individuals grow to take the stable constants in their lives for granted, Mavis. The very concept of death separates the living from the dying. No one wishes to confront it until they have to.

"But you…we, the both of us – we can never look at life without seeing death in it again."

Was that what she had realized, when she looked at Markarov?

 _She trusted me with his life, all of his future, the whole of it…_

"That has to happen to most people, eventually," Mavis said, hushed and laced with vehemence. "It shouldn't be used to – to _punish_."

Loss with every possession.

Fear in every faith.

Death in every living breath.

But she did know grief. She had known it before she was old enough to remember. And every loss since in her life had been yanked out of her struggling hands with bloody nails on both ends. How could she possibly not have understood sooner?

She halted mid-step to take in the sight again. To the far side of the path, rocks laid bare and jagged before hauling off to a sheer drop.

The choice should have been easy. And it had seemed so, at the time – right up until the moment she stood on the edge.

Starvation was slow, but after the apathy had set in, it was possible to sustain through willpower alone. But height – there was something _primal_ to the fear of it. It was an instinctual fear that took every last ounce of self-loathing in a person to beat into submission, for all the brevity of that single moment.

A caw reverberated through the ravine, startling her out of the trance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Zeref striding up to her. She turned to face –

He tilted her head around and kissed her.

It took her by complete surprise.

There was an uncharacteristic forceful edge to it. His fingers pressed into her chin, angling her head towards him without give.

Mavis kissed back. It was hard and graceless, with all of the desperation in their first kiss and none of the care.

Zeref took a step backwards. She reached for his neck and deepened the kiss instead. His eyes were wide and unblinking, inches from her own, and his pulse drummed rapid beneath the tightening hold of her fingers.

The tang of blood burst across her tongue. She could not tell whose it was. There was force enough on both ends to hurt and break at the same time.

Mavis broke away. The sky was swaying with light, brimming in every crevice of her eyes.

"I wasn't going to," she whispered. "I know it wouldn't work. Even if…even if…"

Even if she hadn't already _known_ –

She wouldn't.

Not in front of him.

Zeref stood before her, taking in her words; taking in the sight of her.

There was blood on his lips, and something breaking in his eyes.

* * *

"It was the first thing I tried," he said, not looking at her.

"You don't have to –"

"I thought," he interrupted, very quietly, "you would want to know. It is only fair, after all."

"I wanted to tell you," Mavis said. "It's not…"

She had been open with her past, with all the pain and grief that came with it, and he had taken in all of them with the openness of an ocean in reception of every stream headed for it. Ever unguarded, always unjudging, but never offering any of his own in turn.

"It's not – not about being _fair_ ," she said, not quite knowing how she could put it to him.

Because it was not the same for him. He did not want to tell her – not the way she had wanted, pain and grief and fear catching up to her with the end of her solitude, breaking their hold with the desperation to be heard. This was something that had screamed itself hoarse in the hundreds of years it had lived, that had already made a mute familiar of the crushing silence which followed – and it did not want to speak, anymore.

But perhaps it needed to.

"Tell me," she said. "Please."

Zeref met her eyes. She was not certain what he could see, in that request, but maybe he understood.

"I was researching," he started.

He fell silent for a long moment after, as if he had lost track how to put words into sentences entirely. But eventually, they came again.

"I forayed into studies of the taboo since childhood, hoping to find a flaw I could exploit to break the laws of life and death. They – my teachers warned me against it. Time and again, they warned me. I refused to listen. I was so certain of my ability – so confident that I could succeed…

His hand travelled to his neck, making as if to clutch at his throat, but slackened to thumb at the pendant he was wearing instead. Unbidden, the words that once slipped out of him came to her mind.

 _I want to see my brother again..._

"…And they paid the ultimate price for my folly."

He sounded regretful, terse – but also impossibly _calm_ , if unnaturally so. Mavis swallowed her growing discomfit, tracing out the meaning behind every word in her mind, afraid of missing any.

"The curse struck when my teacher told me that my brother would never return to life again, no matter what I did," Zeref continued, without inflection. "I killed everyone in there, students and teachers alike. More than a hundred people in the place died."

The sudden bout of relief flooding through her at that – that of all the people back there, her friends had made it out alive – made her sick to her stomach.

"I massacred the entire academy," he said, in the same mild, disinterested tone from before, and every shred of guilty relief in her evaporated with it.

He described it as if he had made the choice to kill.

A part of her wondered if that twisted perspective was the easier one to live with.

"You…you didn't," she tried to push the words through, struggling with the way her throat was closing in on itself. "You couldn't have known what would happen…"

He did not react. It was as if he had not heard her at all.

"I…it was the first thing I tried," he repeated the words.

The emptiness had returned to his eyes – glazed, avoidant the way they had been the first time she saw him. As if his mind was drifting somewhere afar, rather than residing within his physical self.

In hindsight, loneliness seemed like an inadequate prognosis.

"After your curse…?" Mavis forced herself to ask.

"I didn't know what to –" A sharp inhale. "Ankhseram's wrath descended on us. Mildian…they knew. They couldn't approach the school without dying. And I – I tried –"

The words fell apart, fighting their way through – "They wouldn't be able to approach me. I had to – and I…I knew I deserved it. They were dead because of me. I knew I deserved it, _I knew_ – but when I looked down, I was still _terrified_."

She reeled inwardly at the cold disgust he placed into the word. It sounded so completely unlike him, in all the time she had known him, that she could have thought him replaced while she stood completely unaware.

"Idiotic of me, really. It wasn't going to kill me."

"It wasn't your fault they died," she muttered, swallowing past the dryness cloying her throat. There was something horribly wrong about the situation, she thought, for there to be such mockery in the lilt of his lips, when she felt as if she was about to cry.

Just as he had been months too late to stop her, she was too late by centuries. And there was not a single thing she could say or do, now, to make the boy from three hundred years ago believe her as he stood on the edge.

"Would you say that of me?" She asked through the burn in her throat, in her eyes. "Is that what you would say of _me_?"

His eyes focused on her again, startled. "I…"

"I – this curse killed more than I can remember," she said. "I wasn't just terrified. I was _relieved_ , for an instant…just for an instant, when I realized I was still alive."

The implications hit her, then. Her heart jolted so hard that for an instant, she forgot how to breathe entirely.

 _You cannot die even if you were beheaded._

He had…

 _No._

 _Please, god, no._

"…No," Zeref said, voice hitching on the word. The disconcerting detachment from before fled him with her confession. "No, you were just trying to save your friend…"

"They warned you against studying the forbidden," Mavis said. "But you had no idea of the consequences. You never intended for them to die."

He did not reply.

"I know," she said, soft and timorous, "I know what it's like to lose someone you love, and miss them like you'll never feel whole again. For every day you live after… you live thinking of all the things that would be different if they were still with you. You wish you could turn back time itself and undo everything that went wrong on the day you lost them.

"You wish, selfishly, that it could have been someone else, _anyone_ else but them…that it could have been _you_ instead. Not because they deserved so much more out of life, but just – just so that you wouldn't have to live with that pain."

He reached for her face, and wiped the wetness under her eyes away with his thumb carefully. There was an open, but almost numb curiosity to the motion – as if he knew he should be sympathizing with her, should be resonating with her grief himself, but didn't quite know how or why.

Mavis grasped his hand with both of her own, pulling it away to look into his eyes. "If I knew how," she said, thickly, "I would have sold my soul. I would have done it in a heartbeat if it meant they could live again – even just for one more day with them…"

Zeref stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language, uncomprehending, unmoving, barely breathing at all – before his face contorted.

"I _don't_ –" He choked out, crushing the heels of his palms against his eyes. Tears leaked through his hands, trailing down his face.

She pulled him in, sensing every tremor that coursed through him. "It's not your fault, either," she said. "It _wasn't_. You tried to cope with loss the only way you knew. You shouldn't have to suffer like this, for the rest of your life, for all of eternity – just because you wanted him to live again."

The curse. The cruelty of it, on so many levels, hit her again. It did not just send him deeper into the troughs of insanity with the contradiction in his thoughts, the harder and longer he fought.

It isolated.

The comprehension of life and death was never meant to be weathered alone, in anyone. A lifetime of it was sobering, if inevitable. Yet – how could people throughout all of time possibly have survived, and surmounted the countless miseries fate had launched at them, if not for the companionship of their fellow brethren?

An eternity of it…

It was _unthinkable_.

 _Three centuries_ , her mind supplied, trying, and failing to grasp at the magnitude of it. _We were orphans – we were barely more than children._

She had been so happy to find a family, only to be orphaned again.

It was not about what they could do for each other, now, a year and three hundred years too late into their underserved retributions.

It was _need_ ; it was desire for closeness that had existed since the time they were born; the desperation for someone to say _I am here,_ and _I care for you_ , and _you are not alone_ – and not even that – but the wish, the mere wish for another voice to say something so little as _I am sorry, that must have hurt_.

 _But if it were at all possible – if fate, cruel as she is, has always intended to bring us together, one way or another – then I wish – I wish –_

 _–_ _I wish I could have been there for you._


	6. Darkness spreads through all the land

Chapter 6

Mavis found a perch on the tree and settled into it. The branches were dry and brittle, but she was light enough not to snap them if she moved carefully.

"Be careful," Zeref cautioned from below, before adding despite himself, "Do you really have to?"

He had seemed somewhat tense for most of the day. She had attributed it to his confession from before, but that tension did not seem to have lightened with their destination now in plain view – quite the opposite, if anything.

"I can see the formation better from here," she said from above him, before sing-songing, "You're just jealous that you can't climb."

He shot her a look that was half exasperation, half fond amusement.

Miles ahead, a conglomeration of stone pillars were spread haphazardly across the terrain, looking entirely out of place where they stood. There was a deliberate pattern to how they were arranged, though she could not quite place it. It seemed to be a subversive attempt on most of the theories she had read on the topic.

"Someone put down the matrix to utilize the topography since the last time you came through, but this place is too desolate for anyone to stay around," she said. "Whoever placed them probably left a long time ago…"

" _Stay away from us!"_

Mavis lost her footing. The world spun and twisted around her.

She hit the ground hard.

Zeref knelt on the ground before her, his head buried in his hands. She scrambled back on her feet.

"What –" She managed to gasp out, before all the breath was stolen from her.

There was another body lying before them, prone and motionless.

Her mind spun in circles, working itself into a frantic – _no one could possibly live around this place, where had she even come from_ , _there was no one_ –

The weeks of relative calm they had shared had made her lower her guard. If she had been more perceptive –

The world went black, all of a sudden.

"No, I…" Mavis tugged at the hand over her eyes. "Let – let me…"

It hesitated, before relenting.

Zeref walked towards the body, steps slow but certain. She followed after him. He paused to glance at her in concern, but did not stop her.

The woman laid there, eyes blown wide open, staring sightless into the sky. Dark hair billowed around her head. The brown cloak draped over her seemed to be dressed for travelling, but they had no way of knowing who she was, or what she had been doing in a place so desolate. Mavis wondered if she had seen her death coming in the moments leading to it.

Zeref slid his hand over the open eyes.

"Do you do this…every time?" Mavis asked, quietly. Perhaps it was petty, to feel somewhat ashamed at the notion, when it made no real difference to the dead person lying before them.

He shook his head. "Only…only when I do," he said after a moment.

Mavis covered his hand with her own, following through the motion.

It was the least she could do – sharing the culpability, instead of leaving it as if he had killed alone.

This was a ritual of his own, in a way. It was peace for the dead, insofar as they could still bring themselves to believe such, but also the only measure of peace the living could hope to find.

"Thank you," Zeref muttered.

She wanted to return it with an acknowledgement, or a gesture of comfort. But no words came to her.

Neither of them spoke of it as they descended the ridge, approaching the site that was to be their destination.

Silently, she wondered what it said about them, that neither of them had shed a tear at the kill, either.

* * *

The sun had almost sunk fully beneath the horizon by the time they reached the scree leading towards the matrix. There was a group already congregated at the previously empty site, dressed like the straggling traveller that had run into them before. Low voices thrumming amidst them, indiscernible at the distance.

Mavis had inferred that the woman had companions when they did not find her provisions, but they had not run into anyone else en route, despite some hours of high alert. Now that what they had been trying to avoid had finally been made visible to them, the dread from before somehow waned in her instead of heightening again.

She turned to Zeref. "We just came at a bad time," she muttered, and added with ill-devised humor when he did not reply, "With any luck, we won't have to queue too long for our turn."

She heard it, then. There was a strange sound mingled amidst the voices, like a soft cry or whimper. It sent a tight clench through her chest. Their companion could never return to them, but only two people in the world would ever know just why.

The clearing went ablaze without warning. She recoiled on instinct, shielding her eyes.

That was when the scream came.

Mavis moved before she could think of what was happening. Her feet pelted against the hard earth as she ran.

The slope took a sudden dive below her and she felt her ankle give way. She tripped, stumbling down the remaining distance, trying and failing to regain her footing as she fell, scrabbling for purchase. The stench was so overwhelming that it seemed to assault all her senses at once.

The fire had grown so bright now that it was almost blinding in intensity, scorching the surrounding air with its heat.

The sound. The agony of it –

It couldn't possibly be _human_.

It was the most terrible sound she had ever heard in her life and it would not stop, would not _end_ , seemed to last on and on _and_ _on,_ stark in contrast yet seeming to meld seamlessly into the litany in the background, all at once. There was an almost hypnotic quality to the rise and fall of it.

The ethernano in the atmosphere weighed down on her as soon as she stepped beyond the barrier. It felt like the first blast of cold air when surfacing from deep waters. Magic pooled in the place as naturally as rain would gather in a low-lying basin in wet seasons, like an oasis hidden amidst an otherwise barren desert.

The pillar in the middle was sharp at the end, almost like a stake. Flames lapped at the stone as if it was combustible wood.

It took her a moment to realize that it was not the pillar that was burning.

The body shrouded in the flames didn't look grown enough to be any older than a child's.

They were still saying something. She could make out the words, all the sounds and syntax. Some more familiar than others. But they refused to register in her mind.

And then she couldn't hear anymore – not the scream, nor whatever they were saying to try to justify this. Nothing could get through the roar of crashing tides in her ears as it drowned out the world.

* * *

"Mavis. Can you promise us something? Never use that spell again. Not for anything."

"Nothing bad happened in the end. I'm not going to just stand by and watch if you're in danger –"

" _Nothing bad_ – okay, I tried, you heard her. Your go, Precht."

"You are our strategist. We don't risk the strategist. Bad things happen if we risk the strategist."

"…That makes sense, but –"

"You won't put us in that spot anyway. Of course, what we get _ourselves_ into is another matter..."

" _Hey_ –"

* * *

Her magic would not respond to her call.

Mavis frowned in concentration, enacting the motions in her mind. Still it would not come.

A hand gripped her by the elbow. She broke free of it on reflex, before seeing who it was.

Betrayal caught up to her at last, eating away at her insides like acid. There was her magic, slipping like water through her fingers, the ground feeling as if it was falling away from beneath her – and the single thought drifting through her mind, a dull memory of how only hours ago, she had wallowed in guilt for killing one of them – had even shut those glaring eyes along with him in the irrational hope that it would grant her peace in death.

There was –

 _Zeref's will has been done._

The proclamation rang out, sharp and satisfied. Silence fell, so deafening that it might as well have been a scream in and of itself.

There was a sharp hiss from the flame.

As if on cue, their eyes turned towards the two of them – these strangers that had shown up out of nowhere to witness their cause, unable to do a thing, unworthy of their notice until they were finished with matters far more pressing.

Mavis looked at the man in the lead, at the ring of cloaked figures rallied behind him – then at Zeref, standing stock-still next to her, features hard as if they were carved from stone.

She had the sudden and absurd urge to laugh.

For a brief moment, neither side moved or spoke as they took in each other.

Then the air surrounding them closed in like a vice – magic pressed in on the circle with all the weight of a collapsing star, amplified by their surroundings. The dead grass by their feet crumbled further to dust in the black miasma that surged forth.

Enough to kill them.

More than enough to kill them all.

A sharp jab of _something_ spiked through her at the realization – it should have been apprehension, she knew, but it felt almost like dark satisfaction.

But there was nothing louder than a soft thud in the wake as a body hit the ground.

The fire had died out completely in the gust. She could barely make out the rest of the group, stirring in confusion and fear, foolishly – so foolishly – still torn between confronting him and fleeing for their lives.

"There's only two of them!" someone shouted from behind the cover of the others. "We have Zeref's favor –"

His throat seized shut before he could manage another word.

The confusion rippling through the group turned to full blown panic. Pure terror colored every face visible to her up front. A wide berth cleared out between them almost at once as they scattered, shoving past each other in their desperation to get away.

It was not his curse. Zeref had asked her, once, if she had chosen the lives she would take.

She saw what he meant now.

Was it not ironic – that in doing so, he killed so many less than his curse would have otherwise.

So many less of those far more deserving than all of their victims that had come before.

"Zeref?" She rasped out the name.

Every line in his face was taut with murderous intent. His irises were blood red.

It was like staring into the face of a stealing stranger. In that instant, it was impossible to see how he could be the same person who had flinched away from her parade of illusory animals for fear of harming them.

Grey spots swam before her eyes. She tried to will them away and focus on the sight before her. Her magic had not responded earlier, but she could still sense it, ebbing and flowing restlessly through her ethernano container in resonation with the surroundings. It was not gone; merely impeded. If she tried a spell other than Law, she knew it would work.

"Mavis," Zeref was saying. It sounded as if miles away. "Mavis…"

His eyes were black.

She breathed.

What had survived of the cult were still frantically retreating from the site. The air was thick with the lingering reminder of their ritual. It took all her will to stop her mind from providing what it was.

 _Don't_ , she wanted to say. She did not know what was meant to follow. _Kill them_ came to mind, fleetingly, but it did not sound right. They were already killers.

 _Don't let them off._

 _Don't let them get away with what they did._

Hypocritical, that she would rather they be dead even though she had no way of executing that will – would rather he did the killing _for_ her, while condemning him for it –

It was almost fully dark. The fading light was too dim for her to see them amidst the shadows by now. If she tried hard enough, she might be able to pretend they had never been there.

This was just supposed to be their site for travelling. Her plan. But there was no reason it couldn't still be utilized, even if some unsavory characters had gotten to it before them. She turned towards the center of the matrix, trying to discern what was left in there.

"Don't look." There was a hand over her eyes, cold as ice. She had never heard him sound so terrified before, not even when the curse had struck with their victim in plain sight.

"Please, don't look, please…"

Mavis pried his fingers away with little effort and opened her eyes.

She looked.

Then she curled in on herself and retched violently into the ground.

A part of her managed to be thankful that she hadn't eaten in over a year.

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **This chapter is based on fanart by atralsinoa on tumblr. (post/142369340459/)**


	7. And your weary eyes open silently

Chapter 7

The last vestiges of daylight faded away. Darkness sank its teeth into them.

Mavis focused on the hold at her arm, trying not to think of his eyes, watching her from the other end. In the absence of observation, her mind went on to conjure the same sight from memory, over and over.

She was not angry. She was not upset. She was…

She wasn't sure what she was, aside from exhausted.

It felt treacherous to lean into that grip.

It felt even more treacherous to pull away.

A river was flowing where only dry earth should have been, its waters clear and shallow. Most of her settled for gratitude and stopped caring, then.

She plunged her head into the water, relieved, as the world dissolved into silence.

When she came up for air again, it was with mild irritation that immortality could not take away her need for breathing. The thoughts she tried to shut away gnawed at the back of her mind like an attention-starved parasite.

It was not his fault; he had no say in what his followers chose to do in his name. He never approved of it, of any of it –

Yet – what misunderstandings could possibly make a man earn a reputation synonymous to the devil himself?

 _They were largely accurate…I am all that the rumors make me out to be._

He had been honest with her, hadn't he? He had not lied.

And she had not believed.

 _I do not believe in any of those rumors._

 _I do not believe in any of those rumors._

 _I do not believe…_

There were still ashes in her hair.

Her throat burned with the reminder of bile. They had not spoken a word to each other since what had happened, and the silence reminded her too much of the year before he found her, walking far and alone and wishing in futility for death. The scream would not stop echoing in her mind.

She scrubbed at her face hard. Her hair was limp and dripping. Strands of it ran over her eyes.

She had seen him, then – saw his face thrown into sharp contrast in the burning light, every line of it taut with murderous intent _._ In that instant, he had been unrecognizable – so completely _unrecognizable_ as the person she knew that she desperately wanted to pretend it never existed, but it was branded into her mind and she knew it was not a sight she could ever –

He had killed, with intent, even without provocation, before. He had told her as much. She had taken in the facts; had thought, at the time, that she already understood what it was like to hold life and death in one's hands, passing judgments on countless based on cold equations alone.

 _But you had wanted them dead too, had you not? To condemn him for it –_

Back there, she had tried to end everything the quickest way she knew, with no idea that killing in deliberation could be so cold or brisk compared to every unintentional kill on her hands.

Or so _easy_.

"Mavis?"

There was a hand resting on her back. She fought the urge to flinch away. It was still cold – usually so compared to the warmth she had been accustomed to, and it chilled her more than it helped.

Eventually, she did. It wasn't warm but it was still comfort, and she could not accept it, not when she could barely bring herself to look at him now.

Zeref shifted beside her. He stared into the water for a long moment, not saying anything, before withdrawing in on himself.

It was fully dark, now, and she could barely make out his figure, a lean shape inked against the shadows closing in on them.

The moon peeked and shone down on them, shattering him into slivers of light and shadows. He was a still and tessellated image in the night, only capable of motion through his wavering reflection in the water.

"Did you know?" She asked, all of a sudden.

"Know…" He glanced up at her question.

"The cultists," she said. "You were expecting them to be there."

"I –"

"Did you know we might run into them when I suggested this?"

"…I suspected," he admitted after a pause of silence. "I've run into them before. Not the same people, and not at this location, but…"

At last, that faceless exhaustion morphed into something tangible within her.

The pieces fell together so easily, now. He had such extensive knowledge of these locations because they were, indeed, where most of his research had been accomplished. Whatever the nature of such research, and for whatever intention it was done, it had left its mark on this world.

And she was angry towards him, now, she thought – but she was angered for all the wrong reasons. Not for what they did, not for what _he_ did – but for not warning her about them.

"…Why?" She choked out at last.

"Why," Zeref echoed, dully. She could hear the sound of his breathing, shallow and uneven, barely audible over the sound of the water.

A faint smile broke across his face.

"Why indeed, when they have…so many of them…shown far less appreciation for life than we ever did?" There was an odd tightness to his voice, the way his words were halting.

"Does that give us the right to decide whether they should live or die?" Mavis demanded, half questioning in earnest, half furious with denial. She surged forward to grab his shoulders. " _Does it?_ "

"Does that matter?" He muttered, still not looking at her. The smile he was wearing retreated into a small frown. "They will be enough on their own, wouldn't they? They will kill themselves off someday and deserve it. Maybe that was why…this way, it'll be easier. This way…"

"What – what are you _saying_?" She asked, aghast.

"Did it repulse you?" He asked through gritted teeth. "I would have killed _every_ – _single_ – _one_ of them and it would still have been better than they deserved – all of those who had the freedom to live and chose to shed the blood of innocents…"

He shook his head, then, as if it had only just occurred to him to answer her question. "No – I have no right…"

"I want to forget the value of life. No…" A fine sheen of sweat gathered in his face. He screwed his eyes shut, as if he could learn the truth if he concentrated hard enough.

He wouldn't. She already knew that he wouldn't.

The sight was not unfamiliar to her.

"I want…I want for them to kill each other…No, I don't – _I don't_ –"

He was shaking in her grip.

She had no way of knowing what was the truth behind his thoughts, anymore. What she did know with certainty was that he had been warped by the curse in ways he never wanted, with no more choice in the matter than she did…and to blame him for it, when perhaps living as long as he did would do just the same to her…and what of it, then? Would she, then, be any more capable of –

 _I will…_

 _I will accept…_

 _I will accept all of you._

The proclamation rang through her mind, resounding.

For the first time since she made it, she began to doubt if she was truly capable of following it through.

"Look at me." Mavis placed her hands on either side of his face. "Stop talking and look at me."

Zeref went still in her hold. He stared at her with wide eyes, looking like it took everything he had not to recoil from her.

"Alvarez," she said, watching his expression. "You founded it?"

"I don't…"

"Where we are going," she said. "How did you found Alvarez?"

It was the only thing she could think of, right then.

The last time they had brought it up, the contradictions regarding war had sent him into a breakdown. But Alvarez was the safe place. The retreat they had agreed on, where they could work on finding a solution as they lived with the curse.

"I…" His throat worked itself for a few times before he spoke again. "After the Dragon War ended, I left Ishigar for Alakitasia. The continent was fragmented into at least a dozen fraction of power, warring amongst themselves. I saw the…potential, to the state, as would any opportunist of the time – only most of them lacked the arsenal to succeed where I did…"

His voice evened out slightly. She released her hold and drew back. It still felt strange to hear him, like this; to hear of what was an undoubtedly tumultuous epoch strung up in sentences, light and weightless, discussed in a voice that she knew would not even raise itself in anger.

"Three years after Alvarez was first established, I grew tired of ruling it. So I left."

"That sounds…rather confident of you," Mavis remarked, uneasy. It had taken her guild close to half a year to put Magnolia back on track again after defeating Blue Skull. For a kingdom newly united, three years was infancy at its most generous.

"Quite the opposite," he said. "I left, fully expecting it to descend into chaos in my absence, and not caring in the slightest if it did."

The underlying words prowled, just there – and the lack of malice in his tone did little to veil them.

 _After all, it would be an interesting pastime._

The callousness he betrayed still shook her, but it did not shock her, anymore.

Zeref did not seem to have noticed. Or perhaps he did, even though he did not say it. The intrigue that had showed in his face faded as soon as the words left him.

"The economy had just been salvaged. Enemies surrounded the kingdom on multiple fronts. And their ruler went missing, at a time like this...at least with some notice beforehand, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it could have been." His smile turned grim and mocking, as if mirroring his thoughts from another time. "They made countless attempts to correspond with me. I ignored every last one. Surprising, that; they actually managed to reach me a few times…"

"What happened, then?" She cut him off, readying herself mentally for the worst.

"A year went by. When I returned…Alvarez was not only standing. It _flourished_.

"The ministers were drowning in paperwork, but only because they were understaffed. The generals were itching for war, for they had long repelled every attempt at invasion by the surrounding adversaries, whom were far more inclined towards truces by that point. The rebels within all but vanished from the scene entirely.

"None of the subjects – _not_ _one_ of them – thought to betray me."

He sounded surprised by the observation. And rightfully so.

"The people there are loyal to me, an invisible ruler, to an extent bordering on worship. Even now…" He trailed off.

"Alvarez is…a place I can fall back upon," he said, at last. "This curse turns my very mind against myself. Immersing myself in its rule was the only way to silence the voices, for a time. Whatever it is that the people – the subjects there have for me, I cannot reciprocate it. But I…do not wish to see them – to see it destroyed.

"It is a project. If I can make myself see it as such…any scholar is loath to leave a project any less stellar than what he could make of them.

"It was what I decided, the first time I returned and they received me without question. After that, I ruled to maximize its prosperity when I was around. Three centuries, give or take…"

The way he had said _there's a breaking point, for anything,_ came to her mind. She could picture it with a startling clarity – this system of balance he had established for himself. Playing for intellectual stimuli to prevent his mind from atrophying. Leaving to wander when inevitably, something triggered the curse again. Killing everything in his path. Breaking from the guilt, detaching, returning to check on his virtual world – and doing his best to forget he ever had any reason to leave in the first place.

For centuries' worth of time, this oscillation between apathy and abject misery had swung like a pendulum in constant turbulence, cycle after cycle, each spanning between years and decades. It was by no means perfect, but it was a system, and it worked. He had managed to retain some of his sanity, even now – even though that much of it was hanging by a thread.

And yet – how much longer would it take, before the weight stilled and the string snapped?

"It isn't – it isn't _natural_ ," Mavis said, perturbed. The idea of any force that could sway one's loyalties was terrifying on a visceral level. She had learned and controlled such, as she did any other factor of conflict in war, but none of her knowledge could provide her with an explanation for this. "What you've said – it doesn't sound like something that could have survived through sheer admiration for prowess alone."

She could tell that he was happy there, insofar as happiness was possible for him. He was glad to have found some measure of acceptance in Alvarez, against every odd, even if he could not recognize that happiness in himself.

But she could not see the hints of whatever was at work as anything but an invisible enemy – and all the more sinister for it.

"You…think so?" Zeref muttered in reply. "I wonder…"

For an absurd moment, she wondered if he could possibly have found it insulting. But he merely sounded pensive.

Then his breathing went harsh, all of a sudden – and any illusion of calmness shattered.

"I am sorry. You – I hadn't _thought_ – I am sorry –"

"You are shaking again. What's wrong?" Mavis gripped him by the arm, trying to steady him. The pallor to his face was stark in the wan light.

He looked almost worse than he did before.

"There is somewhere we should go, first. She tried to tell me – I would have told you, before we were going to leave. But we can't – we can't go to Alvarez, in any case. If we can't understand why…I should have told you sooner. I am sorry –"

Mavis felt her heart sink.

Only weeks prior, she had accepted his offer without question. And now they were close – so close to reaching their destination, only to find –

"What do you mean?" She asked, soft and toneless, already knowing half the answer. Her questioning had brought up the real possibility that whatever happened there could influence her – a problem that should never have existed, back when Alvarez was solely the refuge for his sanity.

"What else…what else have you been keeping from me?"

She hadn't meant for it to sound as accusing as it did. But a part of her realized, even before it left her, that she did blame him. She would rather learn of the complications days or weeks ago than now – with their supposed destination only a spell away, and having witnessed what she never wanted to for its sake.

He looked at her. It wasn't a particularly confronting stare, but – she had the disturbing thought that it was the kind of look a repentant convict might bring to his executioner.

"You died," Zeref said, very gently.

There was something distant, and paradoxically intimate and horridly broken, all at once, to that gentleness.

"The first time I kissed you…the curse overcame your immortality. It took your life."


	8. Still the stars find their way

Chapter 8

Mavis blinked.

She thought, vaguely, that the idea was ludicrous – since she probably needed to be alive to do so.

"I…I died?"

"Dying may be somewhat of an exaggeration," Zeref said, his voice mild, almost detached. "It was more like sleeping, in a sense. You lost most of your life force in the brief span of time that followed, but your magic remained."

Dying…hadn't felt so bad, actually. It hadn't hurt in the slightest.

Save for the uncomfortable heat in his skin, burning on her touch.

She could not remember if her fingers had come away wet.

"Did you resurrect me?" She blurted out before she could think better of it.

He had said something along those lines, once.

 _The curse happened years before I succeeded._

"No," Zeref said, soft and startled, as if the thought had never even occurred to him. "I hadn't thought…" He swallowed. "Bringing you back like this when you – when… It would have been cruel," he finished.

But there was also just as much cruelty in its alternative, if not more.

It felt as if her mind was spacing out, still caught in incredulity. She did not want to feel, right then. She wanted to cling on to the anger. If she didn't, she would have to imagine what it had been like for him in that instant, and if she had believed him dead for a moment – for even the briefest of moments in time – she did not think she could have walked away from it sane.

Mavis did not know what to say in answer. It was already weeks too late for him, and she thought – she was dimly aware that she would not have hated him, even if he did.

She had been furious – _was_ furious, at the cultists, at their situation, at _him_ – but she did not know what it would take for her to truly feel _hatred_ towards him.

If anything ever would.

"You should have told me," she said. Her voice was going hoarse, as if it had been put through hours of exertion. "I could tell that something was off, right after – I hadn't _asked_ –"

"I'm sorry." There was an almost defeated slump to the set of his shoulders. "You woke, after that, and…I…"

"It hurt you."

He did not protest to it. She knew the same memory was pulling to the forth of both of their minds.

"What happened?" She asked. It was clear, by now, that something did – that he would be choosing to reveal it to her now.

"I think…" His voice was thin. "I think I saw Zeira."

For the second time in just as many minutes alone, her world felt as if it was tilted on its axis.

"What –" Her breath caught. "What do you mean _you saw her?_ "

"She is a subconscious illusion of your own creation, is she not?" Zeref said, slow and contemplating. The words flowed from him like something sharp and living, trapped in a room full of breakables. "She can only appear when you do not remember her, Mavis…"

It was difficult, in that instant – so difficult that she could feel herself shaking for the effort for it – to not tear into him. Something was growing and ramming against her chest, tearing it apart in a dozen directions at once. She wanted to demand answers, to lash out for what had been kept from her – to plead for any and all that he had gleaned off that interaction where she couldn't –

But only a feeble question came out of her, in the end.

"Was she…how is she?"

He looked taken aback by the question. "She sounded…fine."

Mavis could place his hesitation behind the word. If Zeira had any idea of what had happened to her at all, there was no way her state could not be upsetting.

"I had no idea who she was, until you told me. I thought, at the time – I…I didn't know." He shook himself. "She said you were alive."

"How would she know –" Mavis faltered, mid-sentence. The same question was reflected in his face.

"…You woke, after that. She hadn't had the chance to stay for long," he said, looking apologetic. _What for_ , a part of her bit with half-hysterical reminder – that she hadn't stayed dead for long enough to learn more through his relay?

"But she mentioned something, before she left. Mildian – I think it is where she wants us to go."

"Mildian…?" Mavis muttered, trying to make sense of the word through the fog of confusion that was swiftly crowding in on her.

The Capital of Magic. And in older texts, the Capital of Time. The precise location of which remains unknown, even to this day.

"That's – that isn't possible. Mildian fell towards the end of the Dragon War over three centuries ago. Some of the lost magics can be traced back to it, but there's nothing left to the city. It is gone."

The precise circumstances were blurry, as were most events of the era – but hardly incomprehensible. Mildian housed what was possibly the first systematic school of magic in history, host to some of the brightest mages of the time. If she were an enemy of mankind in the war, it was where she would have wanted to take out – at the earliest opportunity, and at no cost too high.

"I know," Zeref said, simply. "I was there."

Mavis fell silent. There was an unmistakable forlornness to the statement, something like grief made light after it had lodged too deep to be aired.

"You are right. It _is_ gone. Of all their treasures, a small fraction of their magic may be the only thing that survived to this age. To think, the very war that led to its destruction was probably what saved even that much, in the end…" He trailed off.

It occurred to her to wonder if Mildian was to him as Tenrou Island was to her; if only the vast passage of time had allowed him to look back upon its loss with such levelness.

"I know where Mildian is. But that is the only thing I have to offer," he said. "And however Zeira had come to be…she is no figment of your imagination. That much is certain."

"She isn't," Mavis said. "She is her own person."

A belated sense of unease caught up with her.

They were in completely uncharted territories. She believed, wholeheartedly, in what she had told him – but she could not deny that Zeira was her creation, too. Their perceptions had always been close enough to be near inseparable throughout childhood.

But in her disappearance, Zeira had gone beyond the scope of knowledge Mavis possessed for the first time – was, in fact, offering new information to them.

The only clue they had to ending this curse, when Zeref had been living with it for centuries despite every effort towards the contrary.

Was there more to Zeira than what even her closest friend knew her to be?

 _I am in your heart. What does that make me?_

Her friend.

Her first and dearest friend, who looked out for her, even now – from a separate plane of existence.

"Maybe…" Viewed through that perspective, the knowledge of her near-death sparked a new hope within her, rather than fear or disconcertion. "We have proof now, Zeref – there may be a way of overcoming our curse. Maybe it's why – she knows we can find it –"

And he had kept it from her the entire time, leaving the truth for the last possible moment it could be told. It should probably have riled her more than it did, than this smarting irritation that was already fizzling out in light of the news – but the way he had told her, _you died_ , and _the curse overcame your immortality,_ and _it took your life_ was still too vivid on her mind _._

"Mildian was where the gods were first enshrined by mankind," Zeref said, so subdued that it sounded almost like an afterthought. "Mavis…trying to overcome our curse is tantamount to contradicting the will of gods, who have ruled this realm since the beginning of time itself.

"Please, understand that I have tried – for decades, with any means I could think of – _anything_ within my capability at all. I had too much creativity and far too much time, to my own detriment. In the worst of my despair, I did terrible things… _unthinkable_ things, so desperate was I to end my life, heedless of the repercussions… A fact I would live to regret, for none of them even came close to succeeding."

"I understand," Mavis said, hushed.

And she did. Even now, a part of her felt as if it was consciously withholding her from putting her faith into this course. It took no stretch of empathy to know that the same spark of hope had once lived in him, itself, before it turned from his fiercest ally to his bitterest foe.

"But you said it, yourself," she said, determined. "We have to go. As long as there is still a chance out there, we have to try."

"Let's find it, then," he said, after a pause. "Together."

"Together," she agreed, smiling.

* * *

Mavis dreamt of fire.

Sleep had sounded promising, at first, with weariness bogging down her limbs and the dull weight pressed against her chest. Too soon, however, it turned from restful to anything but.

It was raining when she woke.

There was nothing but a pitch black in sight. She could not be certain if hours or mere minutes had passed, if she had been asleep at all.

She drew upon her magic. Light enfolded her with the familiarity of a childhood blanket. Ripples were blooming above her, overlapping each other as they did. It took her a few moments to realize why they weren't falling.

Zeref was up and sitting beside her. He did not seem to have slept at all.

"Mavis?" He turned to her.

She shook her head. "Don't…don't move. Let me see…"

His eyes were a cavernous black, his face set in calm concentration. There was no trace of the red glint she had remembered.

Rain pattered against the magical barrier over them, whisper-soft in the night. Water beat down on the barrier in a fine mist, shining like stardust.

She reached for his hand. It was still freezing to the touch, as if all of its temperature had been driven out steadily throughout the night. She slid her thumb over his palm, trying to work some warmth back into it.

"You should try to get some rest," he said. "We are leaving tomorrow…"

"I wanted to kill them too."

His eyes went wide. She seemed to have stunned him into momentary speechlessness.

"I would have killed them, even before you did," she confessed. "If it had worked…"

"Mavis…"

It sounded like an attempt at comfort, rather than denial. Strangely relieved, she went on, "I tried to use Law on them, back there. Only…it didn't work."

Perhaps she should have found it fortunate.

Zeref exhaled slowly.

"I can't use Law, either," he said. "I taught you the spell in theory. It was not possible to demonstrate something of that caliber, but I could not have used it even if I wanted to.

"There is a cost to lost magics. There always is. Spells that interfere directly with the domains of the gods require…tributes, in a sense. Last Ages sacrifices the caster's own time to turn back the universal time. And Law…sacrifices the caster's life energy to pass judgment upon the life and death of others, at their discretion.

"The curse of contradiction makes us immortal and ageless. From then on, lifespan and life energy became meaningless."

He glanced down at their joined hands, like he had only just noticed what she was doing. She held on a little tighter, but he did not make to pull away.

"There is nothing we have left to sacrifice, now…except, perhaps, our humanity," he concluded.

Mavis took in the explanation without comment. Despite her unease, the disconnected, almost nonchalant way he discussed their fate had stopped grating on her, now that she knew all too well what it was capable of veiling.

They sat in silence as the rain continued falling, growing heavier throughout the remaining hours of the night.

Dawn broke eventually, and it softened to trail down the sides in rivulets. Their surroundings were visible, if hazy in the daylight now, even without her magic.

It was like waking up to a new world. All around them, wild grass had grown anew, a lush carpet over the previously barren landscape. Some even spotted tiny flowers, opened wide in full bloom.

Mavis got to her feet and ran forth, heedless of the rain.

The plants withered around her as soon as she got close enough, but even that did little to kill the initial bout of joy. She could see the plains rolling ahead of them, transformed to life overnight. Life – countless of it – had found its way to survive in this land, somehow, despite every reason against it.

A familiar conglomeration of pillars entered her line of sight. Her steps faltered.

Zeref caught up with her. The drizzle died down around her.

"It's cleared," he said quietly. "Yesterday, after they left…I…"

"All right," she said.

Her heart shuddered with an odd lurch as they stepped across the boundary. The same pressure flooded through her again, rushing to fill her ethernano container.

She caught sight of them, then. Circles of white were interspersed amidst the grass. Fine dust smeared into her feet with every step as she approached them for a closer look.

"Fairy rings," she muttered without thinking. They were not an uncommon sight, but, she hadn't expected to see them, here and now.

"Is that what you call them?" He asked.

Mavis nodded. He sounded genuinely curious, but she didn't quite want to admit that the term from childhood fairy tales was what had stuck with her.

"I've seen them in forests, but there's nothing herbal to them. Though, I do wonder what myths would have made of them…"

She could see why he would find it of interest. All the grass within the circle of white-capped mushrooms had withered, as if it bore some kind of curse of its own.

"The myths…vary," she said. "Most of them say that they are portals between the human and supernatural realms. Some claim that it will bring about good fortune, for the blessed. And others…claim that if you step into one, you'll die young, or go insane."

"Interesting contradiction."

She smiled. "They can never quite decide on those things, can they?"

Zeref smiled back, small and fleeting, before walking up to inspect the glyphs etched into the pillars. They were clearly archaic, most of them visibly charred or scratched in places. She could only make out some of them through their resemblance to the forms she was used to studying. The center of the site was scattered with translucent shards where flames had superheated the sand, gleaming with a cruel beauty in the rain.

It seemed like an entirely different dimension from the host to atrocities it had been, only the night before.

Mavis lowered her head.

She did not know if she could ever find the courage to ask him _why_.

Why he had earned the reputation he did. Why dark guilds throughout the ages pledged their loyalty to him without question. Why every surviving rumor made him out to be a monster.

And, perhaps worst of all, how much of it all was _deserved_.

The runes came to life around them – a soft, washed-out white, like sea foam above a crest of wave. Magic thrummed through the area, a contained force completely unlike the undisciplined power that had lashed out in every direction from the ritual.

He closed his arms around her. She returned the hold, solid and unhesitant.

"I am ready," she said, addressing him and herself at once. "Let's go."

They were venturing onwards to grounds unknown with less certainty than ever, there were doubts crowding her mind where surety once resided – but the world narrowed down to the single point of familiarity around her, then – and that much, at least, she trusted.


	9. Awaken as the silence grows

Chapter 9

Mavis had witnessed the spell in use before, twice in her life, but it was the first time she had ever experienced it aside the user. She thought she could catch flashes and glimpses of colors, at first, before it turned far too disorienting to keep her eyes open any longer.

When she did, it was so dark around them that it seemed to make no difference at all. For an instant, she had the queer sensation of falling through an endless void.

The ground was solid beneath her feet; it had been nothing more than a trick on the senses. Cautiously, she knelt down and spread out her palm against it, touching dusty stone instead of damp earth. They were decidedly not in the same place they had left behind, wherever they were.

But light seemed to have disappeared altogether.

And the hold on her was no longer there.

"Zeref?"

She could feel the vibrations of the words as she sounded them. Silence blanketed any and all sound she made.

"Where are we?"

No sound. Not even in the deadliest of nights in their journey had there been quietness so absolute.

Mavis raised her hands. Light fell to her command with ease, but it seemed as if there was an impenetrable fog surrounding it. Past the flicker of illumination she had conjured, she could make out none of the surroundings, not even their silhouettes – even her own hands appeared to be swallowed by the darkness.

The beginning of panic stirred within her. She had been mentally preparing for the possibility that the spell might fail – but not as _this_.

A hand covered her own.

"Mavis." Zeref's face came into view. She realised that she could hear again.

Vision had returned – in the immediate range, at least. There was still an odd mist beyond their immediate vicinity, cloaking everything that lay beyond that bubble of space.

"What's going on?"

"It's a stasis." His voice was tight. "I've used the spell before. It may take a while to work out a counter. I never knew…"

He traced a hand over the mist lying beyond the barrier of vision, expression solemn. It receded slightly with his touch to form tiny depressions, swaying as if it was made of fluid water.

Nervousness caught up with her again, all of a sudden.

"I thought…" She muttered. "Maybe there are ruins, or at least – some remnants of it, spared from the…"

It had been what she was expecting. But it occurred to her, now, that if there was anything that could possibly still be sought from such, he should have already tried.

Zeref stilled for a brief moment.

"I wasn't there," he said, releasing her hand. "Wasn't – _here_." There was an audible rasp in his voice. "After the academy massacre, I exiled myself from Mildean. All I could catch was news in the passing. Mildian fell. The last defense of humans in the war was lost.

"I saw the aftermath for myself. The city was gone. All of it. I _saw_ – where it once stood. There was nothing left of it. No ruins or foundations, not even the camps of surviving refugees. Whatever had happened there annihilated it _completely_.

"Civilizations rise and fall throughout the eras. What was lost is of no concern to any whom came after, laying claim to where it once stood. I accepted that. But – you trust her…I…I would not have returned here, otherwise."

Mavis glanced down, trying and failing to come up with a response.

It had seemed like a simple decision at the time, with nothing left to lose when their previous plan fell apart. She had been quick to attribute his apprehension as that towards hope – but what more could she have derived, if it had been all he had shared?

The grey mist around them gave what seemed like a heaving shudder, before lifting completely. She blinked against the sudden light –

A sea of bodies sprung into view.

It was like the ritual they had witnessed the night before, replicated on a scale a hundredfold. They were huddled together – clinging on to each other on the ground, limbs mangled, faces and bodies charred beyond recognition. The closest of them lay crumpled bare inches before her feet, almost tripping her before she could register the sight. It stared – straight at her, jaws wide agape and hollow pits for eyes.

Mavis swallowed the scream that threatened to rise in her throat. She stepped back and spun around, almost on instinct. The rush of anxious worry was the only thing that drowned out her fear.

"They…they were already dead," she said, closing a hand around Zeref's forearm. "Before…"

There was a glassy look to his eyes. His line of sight was focused entirely on the stretch of ground before him – and no further.

"The stasis," Mavis said, tightening her grip. She could feel a fine tremor coursing through him. "If what you saw then was just how it appeared from beyond it – if they used the spell to save themselves…"

"…It's not a stasis," Zeref said slowly, as if breaking out from a trance. "Time does not flow in it at all. That is – that isn't possible, with a stasis. Time can be dilated, ad infinitum if power allows, but it cannot stand _still_ , to the point no energy – no light or sound can pass through…" He swallowed. "This is a seal."

Every theory in mainstream academia had attributed Mildean's fall to the Dragon War – to those with the cause and inhuman power to crush it without leaving a trace. But it was one thing to think it an unsolved mystery, long dead and unfeeling, preserved only by forgotten tomes – and a complete other to realize that here and now, it could have been breathing its last, mere hours or days ago.

The skies above them were pitch black, stretching as far as the eye could see. Even the very air had a disturbing stillness to it. She could breathe without inhibition, but it was stagnant against her skin, stagnant down to her very lungs – like being buried alive within a tomb, left to slow but certain asphyxiation. The scent of smoke was faint but persistent in that air. She couldn't shake the feeling that she would taste it as well, should her concentration slip.

It took all the resolve she had to quash the nausea that rose through her, to convince herself to breathe and not choke on it. If she broke down now, there would be nothing left standing between him and this place, where every familiarity only turned against him.

"Is it possible to just…walk into something like this, once it's formed?"

"No, not to the best of my knowledge," Zeref replied after a few seconds, sounding shakier than usual, but more responsive than he did before. "A stasis can be created or undone from beyond. This is bound to the caster...only the caster would be able to undo it."

All they had used was an amplified teleportation spell. But if there had been any other force at work than what they intended – then she knew, without question, what it was.

"The seal is still working." Realization dawned. "That means – the caster…is still around…?"

Zeref nodded lightly, in a manner more indicative of acknowledgement than agreement. He looked as if he was deep in thought.

"It's been three centuries," Mavis muttered. "How is that possible?"

"That is the shrine of Chronos," he said, gesturing before them as he did. "Mildian is called the City of Time. Chronos is her tutelary deity."

The remains of an edifice stood ahead of bodies before them, battered to the point that it seemed like a strong gust could blow it apart. The arching roof and most of its columns were still standing, but the entrance and the walls at the front had crumbled to the base.

There was a surreal edge to the image, despite the blunt destruction. It looked thin and papery from the distance, as if it was painted onto thin air.

For the first time since they arrived to find themselves within the seal, she felt the first clues of some idea to what their situation entailed. Yet at the same time, she was struck by the sense that they had been entangled in something far greater than they were prepared for.

"That is where she wanted us to go…?" She muttered.

Zeref glanced down at the dead before them. His eyes slipped away, brief seconds later, to face her again.

"We…shouldn't disturb them," he said, quiet, almost unbearably so.

Against her better senses, she did a mental estimate of the count before them.

For once, they were innocent.

But it did not feel any easier.

* * *

Behind the shrine, unmarked graves lined the sloping earth, layer stacked upon layer as they took up every inch of space, almost scale-like at a glance. The building sat on high ground, where it stood watching over the rest of the citadel like a sentinel. Rolled out beneath the vantage, the full extent of destruction it had sustained was visible despite the smog. Deserted roads crisscrossed through scorched and war-torn buildings, obstructed by debris – and more casualties, in all probability, but it was impossible to tell from the distance.

There was not a single living soul in sight; not a single sound that carried up to betray its vitality. The city was dead and vast and silent, suspended in a time from long before she was even born.

Within the edifice itself, the place felt larger than it had seemed from the exterior. The change was immediately perceivable. Where the sky had been sunless before, there was warm and natural light streaming into this place.

Hints of its former opulence showed through stubbornly despite the damage. The ceiling arched over them in an imposing dome, opening up to an oculus in the center. Half of the columns to the colonnades on the left wing were either chipped or damaged, while the right one had collapsed entirely. The floors were tessellated in white and grey, blending into the bland chiaroscuros of the interior. They were coated with dust and chunks of litter, biting at her bare feet.

Light flooded the room through the oculus, the shadows on the carvings of the standing pillars shifting with its fluctuations, almost seeming to come to life.

Zeref stood in its midst, so unnaturally still that he could have been mistaken as part of the shrine itself, affixed like a sculpture with fading colors. The only audible sound was the soft rise and fall of their breathing.

He belonged in this place in a way she could not, she realized – like a lost relic, a missing piece of a separated set reclaimed in its midst. There was an immaterial weight this lost city shared with its kin – a heaviness that could not possibly be understood by another, however bright or dedicated, whom had not shared its passage of time.

Time flowed differently here than it did beyond. Dust caught the light languidly as it swirled and fell through the air; the moment stretching on like infinity compressed.

In that instant, she felt very removed from his world, and terribly small in her own.

"You…they – worshipped Chronos?"

It did not matter if she tried to suppress her voice. No sound seemed capable of going beyond the barest of whispers in this place. Every crevice seemed to house spirits in its shadows, and the heavy silence weighed down on her, as if judging her to be unworthy where she stood.

Zeref shook his head.

"They did. Him and Ankhseram," he said. "I was not born of Mildian. I lived with my family in a small village, until I was six."

She hesitated. "…What was it like?"

"It's…warm. Surrounded by hills. I remember…looking forward to the summers. The amaranths would go into full bloom. The hills looked as if they were on fire at dusk. We –"

He broke off for a moment.

"The academy did not receive students from beyond the city, but the council made an exception for me. The moment they saw that I could already create a perfect stasis field…Time dilation tripped up even some of the best teachers in the academy, at the time – so they had told me.

"In hindsight, they probably had a greater purpose than academia to their interest. They knew the war would come for them. It was only a matter of time. Perhaps they had thought that in the worst case scenario, as a last resort…"

They had still found a way, evidently, even after he had left.

But it was hard to imagine this was what they had intended.

"Mildian took me in, in any case. Though, I suppose they would never have opened their gates to me, if they had known what I was using it for from the start…if they knew what I would end up doing to them."

He made a small sound, too harsh for a sigh, too soft to be a chuckle. "I only learnt it because I wanted to keep our garden from wilting, as a child."

Mavis bit her lip, hard.

She did not ask about what use he had found for a stasis instead.

At the same age, she had held a limp body in her arms, terrified and alone as she begged for the last person in her life to _stay_ – only for death to claim them anyway.

Premonition spiked through her. It felt like all of her instincts were screaming warnings at once – she was struck by the urge to stop, to forget their quest – to just take him and _leave_ while they still had the chance.

It was ridiculous – to want to abandon the only clue they had ever been given, just for the sake of misgivings that rose from nowhere. But try as she did, she simply could not push back the thought that closed in on her, right then –

That if they had stayed here for any longer, they would come to regret it.

"You returned?"

The words were so soft that Mavis almost thought she had imagined it, at first.

There was a woman in a white stola standing behind them, the first and only living person they had seen since entering the seal. Her face was lined with age, eyes narrow and sunken in their sockets, incongruously bright.

"Bring them back." Her lips barely moved as she spoke.

Mavis glanced at Zeref in askance, confusion temporarily winning out over shock. His face was blank with surprise. There was no trace of recognition in his expression.

The stranger had all of her sight on him, an unnerving concentration burning in her stare. She repeated, tremulous, an almost imploring note to it –

"Bring them back."


	10. Gently grieving in captive misery

Chapter 10

Mavis made a fleeting attempt to probe for her magic, but where natural ethernano should have responded to the vessels around it, there was only an unnatural stillness in the atmosphere. Either the seal affected it as well, or the magic wielded by the stranger before them was beyond her knowledge.

"You made this seal, right…?" She managed to ask.

The woman gave no sign of admittance or denial. She walked towards them – a step, then another, and another. Her steps did not echo in the vast halls, as if she was walking on soft ground rather than hard tiles.

The seal. Not even sound passed through it to echo in the vast hall, beyond the barrier of his spell.

"Don't come near us!" Zeref warned. Any confusion in his expression had turned to alarm with her approach. "We –"

The curse struck as soon as the warning had left him.

Dark magic rushed forth uninhibited. Her heart clenched for a beat – not quite horror, but a familiar paroxysm of _shock-resignation-regret_ –

Just as quick as it had started, the black tide slowed mid-movement to a crawl, before stilling entirely. It hung like a palpable fog, frozen solid in mid-air.

The woman disappeared from where she stood. Her hunched and wizened figure turned to a blur as she moved with inhuman speed.

The curse dissipated in the space between them as she came back into view, standing at the far end of the cella. There was unmitigated shock in her face.

Then her expression frosted over.

"You are still cursed?" Every last bit of temperature drained out of her words.

"Chronos." Zeref spoke the name with no hint of fear or anger, nor the slightest degree of reverence – as if it was someone of no more importance than an acquaintance in passing. "You made a theophany?"

The woman smiled. There was no humor in it.

"By the God Soul Takeover Technique." Her voice reverberated with the power of hundreds in chorus, yet every syllable rolled out with the sharp precision of one. "They requested for my aid when Mildian fell."

It did not carry the haughtiness Mavis had been expecting of her – she almost sounded as if she was speaking to an equal. For the second time in brief seconds, she felt her chest tighten – this time with something like stuttering hope.

"This curse…" she began.

Zeref's hand tightened against her shoulder before she could finish.

He was trying to pull her behind him – trying to shield her.

Mavis took an involuntary step back. She understood his warning, but she could not catch on to the reasoning behind it. Chronos – if it was who it was – had not displayed malevolence towards them. There was no reason to see her as an enemy.

She had asked him to bring those people back. If she had wanted to save them, if there was even the slightest degree of decency or sympathy in her –

Perhaps her desperation had clouded her rationality, but the fact remained – right then, the entity before them was the only one who could possibly hold the answer they needed.

"It's been three hundred years," Mavis said, abandoning caution altogether. "Hasn't it been long enough? ...For him, at least?"

She whispered the last of it, barely even aware – until his hand tightened against her shoulder again, and her words caught up with her. The motion was gentle, but there was a nervous – almost pleading urgency to it.

Chronos looked at her. It was an intense, almost puzzled scrutiny, as if she could not quite figure out what she was made of.

Then she turned to Zeref.

"You think this was a _punishment_?"

The mild note of incredulity in her tone was almost enough to make Mavis regret her question. There was just something disquieting – something inexplicably _mocking_ to it.

"…What do you mean?" He asked without inflection before she could.

There was not even the slightest degree of curiosity in it. He sounded as if it was the last question in the world he wanted to make – like he was trying to go through the motions without putting any of himself into it, only because he _must_.

"You were not cursed because you incurred his wrath, Zeref," Chronos said. There was an assessing light in her eyes, as if she was preying for some desired reaction for the answer she gave, and it shook Mavis to the very core – "You were chosen to bear Ankhseram's mark because you _impressed_ him."

A stunned second trudged by; Mavis turned to Zeref on instinct, trying to gauge his reaction.

There was no shock in his expression – no disbelief. It was just a look, flat and resigned, the like of which she had not seen since the first time she returned to life.

"How?" He asked, impossibly level. "I defied his laws."

He did not want to know.

She realized it, almost at once. He did not want to know if it was truth or falsehood, if there had been more to the apparent cause behind the fate they were dealt with. Whether it was justice, or punishment, it made not an iota of difference to what either of them had gone through – nor the countless lives that were dead by their hand.

"As have many," Chronos said – unaware, or more likely uncaring. "But he chose _you_.

"You designed a system powerful enough to resurrect the dead. You conceptualized a gate that could transverse through time itself. Such aptitude and power…such intimate acquaintance with life and death. Our laws, the laws we set upon the human realm when _nomos_ was put to _physis_ , they mean nothing – _nothing_ to you. You have genius unparalleled in _centuries_. Why would he _not_ choose you?"

Vertigo washed over her so hard that her knees almost folded beneath her. The involuntary question he had made, only the night before, sprang to the forefront of her mind –

 _Why, when they have…so many of them…shown far less appreciation for life than we ever did?_

The hand on her shoulder tightened almost to the point of hurting. She did not dare to bring herself to catch his expression. She had the feeling that she might be the only thing that was grounding him, right then.

Chronos smiled, and any lingering doubt to the mockery in her expression dissipated with it – "Three hundred years, and you never so much as brought yourself to suspect otherwise?"

Zeref did not answer. His hand slackened on her shoulder, all of a sudden. It was a silence from him she recognized – not confused, but premonitory in nature.

 _It isn't natural_ , she had said _–_ _it doesn't sound like something that could have survived through sheer admiration for prowess alone._

"Ankhseram…sways the loyalty of his followers?" She asked, trying to keep hysteria from creeping into her voice. Whatever the scheme the gods had seen fit to involve them with, it was evident by now that Chronos harbored no good will towards them. If anything, he was Ankhseram's ally and accomplice.

Chronos gave her a side-glance, too brief to be considered a proper response. Her smile widened for a fraction when she turned back to him again.

"You would want to believe that, wouldn't you?"

There was something _knowing_ to the question, like she had seen right through their doubts – had every intention of spreading and pinning them down to be flayed open.

"No," Mavis said, refusing to give ground. She looked to Zeref, and the implications hit her, all of a sudden. His gaze was fixed on her as his face slowly drained of what little color it had, poised to back away.

"No, it wasn't that," she said, raising her voice. "It _wasn't_. I know. Trust me, I _know_ –"

Chronos gave an insouciant sigh. It sounded almost like dissatisfaction.

"If we could turn your faith with such ease, you need never have bore this curse," she said. "But you – you make us _wait_. Three centuries. What has kept you for all this time?"

It did not sound accusing. It sounded like an observation, made in convenience rather than deliberation – only the lightest touch of curiosity beneath it.

"Not even gods can influence the will and thought of mankind. Those are gifts sacred to your own. You share his impression before those whom held idolatry for you…you appear as a god in all but name – because they were _looking_ for one.

"But if they should offer you their worship, and pledge undying fealty, and show willingness to dedicate their very lives and beyond – that is their choice alone."

Zeref looked back at her, unblinking. His expression was inscrutable.

"Then…if I have committed the unforgivable in my attempts to erase this fate, it is my choice alone," he finished, of his own accord.

"Why go to such lengths at all – what is it that you desire of them? Death? Mayhem?" His voice was even – perfectly so, and Mavis caught the brief, flickeringly brief glimpse of red, spreading in his eyes like blood across dark waters – "Would they not have chosen someone else to suit their purposes, cloaked him in vague tales and rumors, shaped him to be the ultimate incarnate of evil itself…created a convenient symbol to channel the darkest of their desires, revered him as they execute choices of their own, and guilt could bead and roll off their hearts like water upon wax –"

" _Apathy_."

He stopped abruptly at the word. His lips trembled for a moment, as if there was more he was struggling to spill, yet was physically incapable of bringing himself to do so.

"They cannot interfere directly with the affairs of our realm," Mavis said, looking at Chronos as she did. "But they found ways of circumventing it…isn't that so?"

Chronos shot her a look, sharp and assessing. Her dismissive slight from before had disappeared. The look from her now belonged to someone who had found cause to view her as an opponent.

Mavis ignored the piercing glare that lanced like a dagger to the side. She walked before Zeref, forcing herself to look up into his eyes.

"The way your subjects revere you when you showed little to no care towards them, the way cults who have never even seen your face worship you…it borders on _religious_ ," she said. "You created these dark legacies, unable to decide if you wish to destroy, or to be destroyed… and you convinced yourself that what people made of them was their own doing."

His eyes were the black of burned out coals. He had heard her, she knew, he couldn't possibly _not_ have – but he did not look or move or speak. His breaths were catching in his throat as he stood, so still that he barely seemed alive at all.

"You do not _care_ , Zeref. At least, not always," she said, merciless, hating it as she did – " _That_ – that apathy is _precisely_ what they want of you."

"It would end, eventually," Chronos said, her voice cutting in like a dousing flood of cold water. She had made no move to stop her, and there was no disappointment or anger in her face now – only patience and calm disapproval, like she was dealing with misbehaving children. "All of time and space, spited even by death itself… The more you lose, the less you are _moved_. Life or death, good or evil, faith or heresy…they make no difference if you should live to an eternity..."

"What about you?" Mavis shot out, grasping at the first thing she could to stopper it. "You held on to Mildian for centuries, in the hope that they –"

" _She_ did," Chronos said. Her calm mien broke for the briefest of moments, before smoothing out again.

Mavis stared at her. A cold horror intermingled with pity washed over her as realization caught on.

"Is this what you meant?" She asked, barely above a whisper. "Not even gods can influence the will and thought of mankind…" The full understanding of their situation sunk in at last, sparking something within her, sick and furious at once – "And you think – you think he's taking _too long_ –"

"I see." Zeref spoke up beside her, all of a sudden.

She swiveled around to look at him in surprise. The empty expression he wore had fallen away. He gave her a reassuring nod, before turning to address Chronos again.

"The takeover technique has bound you to her soul," he said. "You claim his name. But his powers are directed entirely at _your_ will."

Chronos nodded, slowly, as if in approval. "You have always been the cleverer of us," she said, something close to envy coloring her tone. "You chose your own with caution – you know to wait for the right time…"

"I am not him," he cut her off.

"Not yet," she refuted easily.

"It won't happen."

The denial wasn't made with desperation. There was a confidence to his voice that had been absent before – something akin to grim satisfaction. Mavis did not know how it could have come by, when he had been all but in catatonia only moments ago. It was as if he had found a hidden card against their opponents – one that even entities as ancient and powerful as they had failed to foresee.

"If it has not happened by now, it won't. They will be waiting for a long time yet." He smiled – actually _smiled_ at that, and she felt her heart leaping straight into her throat – "You are not _him_ , either."

Before them, Chronos went deathly still. "This _is_ my wish."

"It is an obsolete wish, in any case," Zeref said. He had taken the revelation from her with passive silence, with no outburst of grief or anger as he internalized it – and now, he returned one to her with what seemed to be a similar detachment to his pity. "Ankhseram will not bring them back. When the curse struck, I killed the entire academy. He held no regard for the lives of those in his worship."

"They condoned heresy," Chronos said icily. "The rest of this city was _faithful_."

"Why that moment, then?" He asked in an even tone. "If this curse has been his machination, all along – why choose that precise moment for it to strike, when I had engaged in heresy for most of my life?"

Silence stretched on between them. For the first time since this encounter, he seemed to have placed her on the defensive, but it brought about no satisfaction – every facet of it was laced with the implicit realization that someday, they might find themselves in her place.

"They did not condone it," he said, when no reply came. "They were on the cusp of expelling me, when it happened. I was not born of Mildian – it would have ended in my exile."

"They could have lived," Chronos said. The divine power in her voice had dwindled down to nothing, leaving it quiet and lonesome – unmistakably _human_. "You saw them…had you not? The last that survived of them gave all that remained of their magic to protect this shrine from the onslaught. They were _defenseless_. They trusted that I could save – if I had mastered this technique sooner, I could have…"

"You couldn't," Zeref said, bluntly. His voice softened, "They could have lived, had the best mages amongst them still been alive."


	11. Darkness sings a forlorn song

Chapter 11

Silence pulsed between them like an unsheathed blade, poised and ready to strike. Mavis could hear the crash of her heart, beating wild against her ribs – could place the exact moment the truth turned to realization – to cold anger – to sheer, undiluted _loathing_.

" _You_ killed them," she said. "When you killed the academy, you doomed us all."

"Ankhseram never wanted them to live," Zeref said, still composed, but there was a terse undertone to it. "You opened your very soul to Chronos. He had to know –"

"Don't antagonize her," Mavis warned in an undertone.

The woman had just slowed time before them with more ease than _breathing_ – whatever spell he was using to counter the seal, it couldn't hold up against someone channeling the powers of a deity.

"I don't need him." Chronos – the woman that was housing his soul spoke, then, plain with certainty. "Even if you have not become him, _you_ _can_."

Her eyes were alit. There was something familiar and rattling to her expression, to the fervency in it and the conviction behind her announcement. Mavis could see, then and there, how that obsessive hold to that wish had been the only thing which kept her sane over the course of three centuries, trapped and feeding from the remains of a lie.

Zeref shook his head slowly. "I can't," he said. His voice was low with regret.

Chronos stared at him, incomprehension stark in her face. "I heard you, at that symposium. Your theory on the R-system – surely you have already succeeded –"

There was no more recognition in his face than there was when they had first seen her. Mavis shook her head, caught between sympathy and repudiation. There was no expecting him to remember a stranger amidst a crowd from then, in a place he had believed to be dead all along, when she could barely even remember the faces of her own parents.

"I was urged to stop my research on it," Zeref said, faintly. "My teachers...were right to stop me. I hadn't understood, then, but – they were _right_."

Mavis turned to him, startled.

He had told her that he succeeded.

She would not contradict him – not now, not in circumstances as these, but –

"You never saw cause to follow the laws of our gods!"

Chronos closed in the distance, so swift that not blurs of her image was visible. She reappeared – barely more than an arm's length before them, heedless of their curse.

"And now you choose to – just to spite us?" Her face was twisted with fury.

Mavis recoiled, more from shock than actual fear of doing harm. Zeref did not move from where he stood – merely shifted, a minuscule movement that could almost be mistaken for a flinch.

"It's not…" he began.

Mavis seized him by the wrist, trying to pull him back. Every nerve in her was taut in anticipation of an assault.

"You have every cause to loathe the gods, for what they did. But these people – these people are _innocent,_ " Chronos said, deathly quiet.

And Mavis watched, completely stunned, as she sank to her knees before them.

"I've waited three centuries for you to return," she said, lowering her head further – "Please. Bring them back."

Not an assault.

A gesture of obeisance.

"They cast you out. They damned your very name in history… Is that why?" Her voice was near inaudible as she spoke into the ground. "They didn't _know_ – they had been nothing more than pawns and sacrifices –"

"I deserved that," Zeref interrupted, with the strained tone of someone who was approaching the limits of his tolerance. "I deserved a lot worse than that."

"Then _why?_ " She lifted her face, and bored into him.

In the wrong light, the woman before them seemed almost more ghost than human – stillness in her frame and desperation burning in her eyes.

Mavis could catch the strands of white in the greying hair of the woman kneeling before them, could count every line in her aged face, at the distance – and it sent a cold, sinking feeling through her, as it finally occurred to her to _wonder_.

If her family was amongst those she was so desperate to save; if they had just walked by any of them amidst those remains, completely unaware.

"A life for a life," Zeref said, the barest of tremors entering his voice. "If that was all it took, I would have…I would _have_ , then, but the human cost required for it – it's not plausible. The R-system has been forbidden knowledge for centuries. I had a stroke of luck, once, only because I knew the imprint of his life like no other…enough to rewrite it into being.

"If I could repeat that feat so effortlessly, I'd have started with those I killed. This curse would have meant _nothing_."

"Don't…" Mavis muttered. Comprehension dawned, only to be quickly replaced by dread.

 _Don't tell her you succeeded._

 _You shouldn't have told her that you succeeded for your own –_

"These people are dead," he said, and she knew he could not have heard her – much less what she was trying to tell him. The tremor in his voice was so prominent by now that it could not possibly have escaped either of them, whether he had been trying to veil it –

"They've been dead for centuries, and they can never live again."

Chronos lifted her head and looked at him, dead in the face. There was no light, no life, _nothing at all_ in the black vacuum of her eyes.

Darkness crashed in like a physical thing.

There was a sharp crack, followed by a strange, shuddering sound as light came through again. Mavis caught sight of Chronos, advancing in on them.

There was nothing human left to her. White runes were creeping over her body, a solid midnight black. Magic emanated from it and pressed in on what felt to be every direction at once, filling any and all of the stillness she had once sensed in the air.

Zeref was stepping back and away from her, both of his hands raised.

"Don't do this," he said, placating rather than threatening – a surprising sincerity behind it. "We are not your enemy –"

"Ze–"

Her sound was ripped from her along with her sight before she could even finish the word. She spun around, reaching out blindly with both hands for where he had been, trying to convey to him what she could no longer say –

 _You can't reason with her._

 _You just ripped the last shred of hope out of her begging hands._ _She is beyond reason now._

In all the years that came after, she would not know what it was that compelled her to _move_ , just _so_ , just _then_. All she could remember was the single thought of it, in that single instant, without reason or hesitation.

Pain hit her worse than it ever did in her life.

It hurt.

She curled in on herself. It hurt like the summation of every wound she had ever lived through, a mass of scald and scrape and bruise and break all at once, and she would scream but there was no sound, there wasn't even enough air in her lungs –

 _"_ _Mavis_ –"

She thought she could hear her name, somehow, through that silence – before it died out as well. There was nothing left but the all-encompassing darkness from when they first stepped into the seal.

No light or sound, or time.

The pain receded as fast as it hit. The curse worked through flesh and skin, mending every injury without fail, leaving a numb and tingling trail in its wake.

She clung on to the edge of consciousness, bereaved of all her senses, more terrified than she had ever been.

That assault had been meant for Zeref. If it did what she believed –

Law was completely beyond her ability, and her light magic had not even pierced the seal when she used it. It was galling – terrifyingly so – that there were so few spells in her arsenal that she should run short of an offensive when she most needed it.

Vision flooded back, all of a sudden.

Mavis stood, unsteady on her foot. A solid hold caught her by the back of her waist. She looked up and saw his eyes, staring straight ahead – red flashed across them, once, then again, brief and erratic.

Chronos stood only steps ahead of them, making no move to follow through the previous assault. He was not looking at Zeref, but at her – with far greater intensity than that sole instance she had caught his attention.

"You bear Ankhseram's mark as well?" He asked. It was the same voice of divinity they had heard from him, in the beginning – when he claimed to have offered aid to Mildian.

Mavis did not answer; did not so much as pause to think of the meaning of it. She broke free of the hold on her, calling upon her magic as she did. Light folded around her like a cloak as she rushed forward.

She held her breath, and reached –

For the first time in memory, she was willing for it to happen. But in the one moment she needed it most, the familiar throb behind her eyes never came.

The curse would not strike when she acted with the intention to kill.

"Is this your plan?" Chronos asked – looking straight at where she was.

Mavis stared back, so startled for a moment that she forgot about fear entirely.

The column of black magic headed for them before she could react.

She sensed the spell before she saw it. The same death as that held by the curse – only unleashed with intention, as it did back in the clearing last night.

There was no knowing if it would work against a god, but she could not die. She latched on to the arm before her, holding both of them in its way –

It slowed, before stilling entirely.

However immortal or powerful, they could not defeat someone who could manipulate time to his will.

Chronos was lowering his hand – impossibly, a gesture of peace, after the offensives they had just traded. A smile showed through the obscuring runes in his face.

"So he chose another," he said.

It took a long second for her to even recall her intention.

The change hit almost like a physical sensation. The fog that had always hung in the back of her mind cleared almost instantly, leaving a sharp lucidity in its wake. Every shape and color in her surroundings were heightened – felt somehow larger, felt more vivid than they had once seemed.

She had power over this curse – she was in complete control.

But she had no way of acting upon that intention. She turned back to Zeref, a detached curiosity rising through her.

Was this what it had felt like, when he was making that choice?

If that was so – she wondered how he had ever managed to stop.

His eyes were wide as he took in the sight of her, the last vestiges of red already retreating from them again. There was a minute, almost imperceptible trepidation in the look he was giving her.

Maybe that was the expression she wore, the first time he had killed before her in deliberation.

Or had she stared at him, reviled, as if she was looking into the face of a stranger?

"You wish to break free of your curse?" Chronos asked, taking in the exchange between them. There was something akin to cold triumph glinting in the black discs of his alien eyes.

She remembered, then. It was the very first question she had thought to ask him, when they learnt of his presence – before everything fell apart. The answering plea hung on the tip of her tongue, almost on reflex.

But she had no words left to give, nor trust for his sympathy to spare.

Light burst into her vision, burning into the back of her eyes. The flesh in her hold turned scalding to the touch. Her hand slackened as she stumbled back.

She _saw_ –

She could see _time._

The very fabric of it, spun like threads on an invisible wheel – a nebulous web that pulsed through the space like countless tiny hearts beating in sync, dying out one after another as each knot of it unraveled in the light. There was a shape in the heart of it – a face, only barely discernible as that, the true face of the deity before them. Its hollow eyes were narrowed into slits, its mouth slowly twisted into a mimicry of a human smile –

Unconsciousness hit fast and brutal.


	12. Sunsets have forsaken all

Chapter 12

The world was young, once.

The air was thick with salt where waves crashed against its undisturbed shores, dissolving into white sprays of mist, again and again. And summer, cradled in the arms of its blissful skies and the bitter blue of its seas, lasted unto eternity.

Mavis shook the tree as hard as she could, as if she was trying to dislodge the answers from a reticent child. Her arms tired soon enough, but still the fruits refused to fall.

Zeira was saying something. Times like these, she usually did.

Mavis said _watch me_ , cheerily, because she usually did.

And that was when they fell, one after another, straying completely clear of the makeshift basket she formed hurriedly with her dress. She watched with a confused dismay as they splattered across the ground, mottled across the dark earth at her feet.

Zeira had laughed, then. Mavis laughed along with her.

A little more than a year had passed since the day they returned to bury the bodies amidst the ruins. Summer reigned eternal where they lived, but the world was young only because they wanted it to be.

The world grew older, for every day they lived.

Mavis embraced it with open arms. But a part of her never stopped wondering if Zeira secretly hated it for ageing.

Zeira left. She never breathed a word of her fear to Mavis, even in the last moments of their parting.

And Mavis had never told her, even in those moments, that she did not want Zeira to live on in her heart.

She wanted Zeira to live on in her world.

* * *

The world felt as if it was focused through a scratched and blurry lens, with too-bright colors and too-acute sounds. Everything felt like a part of a dreamscape that would slip away the moment she tried to reach for it. There was no pain, but all her joints felt as if they had been freshly welded together from shattered pieces, tugging on leaden sinews as she shifted.

She was lying flat on her back, pillowed against something soft. There was a hand braced against her forehead.

Mavis blinked, slowly. She could not quite find the incentive to move now.

Memory flooded back.

She sat up so quickly that she almost rammed into his head. "Did I…"

The answer did not come immediate. She reached out blindly, catching Zeref by the shoulder. "Did I –"

"You didn't kill her." There was an odd edge to his voice. Her vision was focusing, slowly but certainly into her wake, but she could see barely more than his silhouette before her.

Mavis let out a short burst of breath, before she thought to ask, "Did – did you…"

"I didn't kill her, either. I couldn't even if I wanted to." She felt a light, swaying motion with the answer, like he was shaking his head. "Chronos abandoned his vessel. Her will was the only thing that was keeping him here, for all this time. The moment she…gave up, he…"

The muscles in her limbs still trembled – from the aftereffects, or perhaps just the shock. Whatever Chronos – whatever spell his vessel had hit her with, it felt like the sum of pain in all of her life. The gods were uncaring, and merciless – but in the end, perhaps the human was the crueler of them.

"You shouldn't have…" He whispered, after a moment.

She could see his face, now.

His voice was so steady. She hadn't even realized he was crying.

"You," she muttered. A faint, disbelieving laugh made its way out of her. "You – you decapitated yourself, you know…"

Zeref made a strangled sound, like he was choking back a sob. He pinned her head against himself, circling his other arm around her back.

Mavis buried her head in his chest. She had not been upset, she thought – or at least, she had not realized it until she saw him. But she could feel the burn in her eyes, right then – and there was no stopping it, no matter how hard she willed herself.

She had been so ready to believe that Zeira had led them to Mildian because there lay an answer to their ordeal – had placed her faith in her friend without hesitation, and placed all her optimism into that belief, despite his warnings against it.

And answer they did find – but it merely plunged them into deeper despair than uncertainty ever did.

Trapped by the curse, she had once thought the worst fate they could ever meet with was the slow and agonizing descendent into madness – of seeing themselves turn into what they once most feared and hated, twisted beyond recognition as they unleashed destruction upon the world.

But it was not even that.

It was a hollowed-out shell that held no regard for any and all lives, nor love or hatred, indifferent to hope or loss.

There was no avenue of appeal, no disproportionate punishment, no misconstrued notion of justice delivered by a higher power. This was merely a part of the scheme devised by apathetic deities, dealt in the sole purpose of carrying out their machinations upon this world as they pleased.

There was no out for either of them. Not ever.

Except.

 _Except_ –

"If –" she said, short and stuttering as she lifted her head. "If one of us could become Ankhseram…"

 _There is nothing we have left to sacrifice, now…_

"No," Zeref cut her off. "Mavis, _no_ –"

"Then," she went on, feeling strangely calm, "then he would have no reason to keep the other under this curse anymore…right?"

 _…_ _Except, perhaps, our humanity._

"You can't," he said, as if it were an immoveable law of nature. "It won't happen. You don't have what it takes."

Mavis gave a small huff of laughter. She closed her eyes as weariness washed over her again, not wanting to see the confusion in his face.

The decade past flooded through her mind, memories sinking like hooks through the flesh of time and space, tugging on the bones of a delayed conscience. Dully, she wondered if she had felt guilt to that same degree as she sat watching their celebrations, longing for her missed chance at adventure; as she stood before the audience of her allies, her moniker falling smooth and confident from her lips, the scent of blood still ghosting upon the unblemished skin of her hands.

 _I have a title now. They call me the Fairy Strategist. It suits me, don't you think?_

Long before the curse had activated in her, she had sinned.

She thought of the absolute command she had over her mind and body when she finally tried to kill in deliberation, and wondered if he knew of it – _of course he did_ – and wished he would condemn her for it, but knew he never would.

In the end, she would outlive every life she had ever loved, save the last one.

The shrine was not looming over them anymore. All that was left of it was a ring of torn down walls and rubbles, and as she set sight on them, they crumbled down further – ageing into dust, fine and white like pulverized bones, swept away before they had the chance to settle.

It only occurred to her, then, that she could see – and he was not holding up the spell that countered the seal.

Above them, light was streaking across the sky like a fiery lance. A single spark fell – and a thousand more followed the first in a blazing shower, as if every star had been plucked and kindled, set to fall.

There was no sound as they fell. It was not a silence of emptiness, but solemnity, as if lit in vigil for the dormant city beneath.

"The seal…" Mavis muttered in delayed realization.

Zeref's breath hitched, for the briefest of moments.

Then he pulled her back into the embrace, and breathed out above her, barely audible, "We can break this curse."

She could not register the words, at first.

"We almost did, once," he went on, quiet, as if those words were brittle enough to shatter on impact. "Ankhseram refused your claim to death. But he has yet to succeed in a take-over. Within this seal, made by another god at full power, our life forces are arrested. If it had drained, before he had the chance to restore it…"

"We…we can…be free?" She asked, slow and disbelieving.

Tears sprang into her eyes afresh. Her hands bundled hard around the fabric at his back.

"Don't cry," he whispered, and she heard his breathing go harsh, all of a sudden – "Please, don't cry."

He had never asked it of her, in all the times she had broken down in his presence. She tried to pull back from the embrace to see his face, but he was holding her flush against him without give.

"We can be free now," he echoed her. "So please, don't cry…"

"I'm not crying," she said, trying to put a smile into her voice as well. "I just…"

She gave a small sigh of frustration. The explanation fizzled out in her.

"I saw Chronos, when he was breaking the seal." she said instead. "That's why he asked me about my curse, right before – he realized there's an out for us." She tensed, jerking out of his hold. "Do we still…"

Zeref looked at her, his eyes widening. Mavis thought she caught a glimmer of panic in his eyes, for an instant, but he turned away a moment later, and she could not be certain if it was ever there.

The sun was visible, and halfway above the horizon – just as it had been, hours and days and years ago. This was the same sunset that had burned through the skies for centuries, casting a dead city in the hues of blood, with a promise of night that never came.

"Until that light goes out," he said. "A seal of this magnitude takes time to undo, even for a god."

She had seen Chronos, when he set to breaking the seal.

He was not stopping at that – he was laying the entire citadel within its protection to waste, along with the dead within it. The place that had once offered their worship so freely to him, centuries ago – and not even the barest trace of its existence would be left behind. For it had also been the very place that had trapped him for centuries for the sake of a single, impossible wish, and she realized, right then, what Zeref had not mentioned in his answer.

They might not be killers, this time, but from the moment he made that rejection, the woman who channeled her god had no viable fate other than death.

They sat like the eye of a storm, the only immoveable things amidst the temporal tempest that was laying waste to everything in sight.

"It's not such a bad end," Zeref muttered beside her. "To just…fade away, like this. No funeral, nor celebration. Not missed or grieved by a single soul."

He sounded sad, but not overcame by it. Mavis turned to him, slightly surprised. She had been expecting grief from him, to see it destroyed before him – yet he seemed to accept its loss with even more calmness than she.

But then, he's already had centuries' worth of time for that grief – free from any delusions that they might live again.

"I don't know," she said, hunching in on herself. "It sounds lonely, to be forgotten."

For so long, she had been longing for nothing but the mercy of death. And yet, knowing that it was so easily within her reach, now, she felt something clenching and breaking within her chest simultaneously – not fear, or quite regret, but something akin to mourning.

Zeref shook his head, pulling her towards him.

"You are not alone," he said, soothing in its conviction.

"I just…" She muttered, smiling. "I know it's silly, but I – now that I know there's a way out, I just can't help but think of all the things I haven't had the chance to do."

Yuriy. Precht. Warrod.

Fairy Tail.

Her family. She had left them with nothing but a broken promise.

And Makarov.

She would have watched him grow up. She would have been there when he learnt his first words, when he babbled her name, when he took his first steps and toddled towards her on unsteady legs.

Or at least, she should have been.

"I wouldn't want to be missed," she said, wiping across her eyes with the back of her hand. "I wouldn't want to be missed at all."

"We can," he murmured, the words blending into the vision of the life she would never live. "We can wait a little…"

Time turned vast and silent, measured in the spans of breaths, quiet in the same space of air they shared.

Mavis felt as if she had lived through entire lifetimes in the past few weeks.

"You wouldn't be where you are now, if it wasn't for me," Zeref said, quietly, breaking the lull. "I suppose…you'd have been happier, if you had never met me in this life."

 _I don't blame you at all,_ she wanted to say, and _I never regretted meeting you_ , and a thousand things that felt too vague for anything she could hope to voice, at this last chance; her mind roiling with a thousand thousand questions more she had never thought to ask, until death was well and truly imminent for them.

 _Were you in love with me, or the kindness I gave? Would anyone – anyone at all – be good enough for you, had they been the one to show you anything remotely close to this acceptance you so crave?_

But it didn't matter, anymore.

They've found an end. She could look back on the brief time they had shared with each other with gratitude, with happiness, as they lived out what little time remained of their lives. Staying here, like this – content in loving, and loved in return.

There needed be no more grief for the losses that were, nor fear towards the eternity to come. Nor weariness from fighting the darkness preying within them, nor doubts if there were more sides to the man she loved than she would ever understand in the full.

Then, she could look at him with nothing but love in her eyes.

Perhaps it was for the best.

After all, this cursed life had enough misery of its own without their self-inflicted torments.

"It doesn't hurt," she told him, listlessly. "Dying. It doesn't hurt at all."

"I know," he said, earnest and subdued, even though he couldn't possibly do.

"I wish…we could have lived a normal life together," she murmured. "I treasure the time we had together, I truly do, but so much of it was – painful. I wish – I wish it didn't have to be…"

"I know…"

"My friends, they never knew what happened to me. I – I wish they wouldn't have to keep – guessing, and _hoping_ that I…"

"I promise…"

"Is there anything you…before _…_?" Mavis asked, not knowing what to expect. It felt like the right thing to ask and the worst thing to ask, simultaneously.

"I have lived too long. There is little I desire of life," Zeref answered, slow, but with unshakeable certainty. A long moment passed, before he added, "I wish…we could just…stay like this. For a while…"

They had until sundown.

If this was the last warmth they were to feel before their ends, then by god, let it last. Let every doubt and anguish plaguing them fade with their leave. _Please_ , let them have this, at least – let them _rest_.

They could fall asleep like this – in synchrony, a soft rhythm of rise and fall, an enclave of shared warmth within the space of a single breath.

If only they weren't two immortals running out of time.

A sense of peace seeped down into the core of her very being – a calm, quiet hope, nothing like the manic excitement she had been expecting of herself.

"Can I kiss you?" Zeref asked, cradling her face in his hands. The touch of his fingers was light on her skin.

Mavis angled her face towards him, trying to memorize the last sight she would take with her. His features were drawn and highlighted in gentle gradients in the eventide.

She closed her eyes and nodded. The dark silence that fell as she did was no longer confining – but natural and soothing, the way lights were meant to go out before turning in.

She leaned forward in his hold, and waited for sleep to come for the last time

* * *

 ** _Mavis: If only, back then…if only I had believed you more…_**

 ** _Zeref: What…what do you mean?_**

 ** _Mavis: You loved me. And as proof of it, the curse of contradiction stole away my life. But, even though you were under the same curse as I, I wasn't able to steal away your life._**

 ** _Zeref: …_**

 ** _Mavis: Some part of me must not have believed you. I didn't have enough strength to love._**

 ** _Zeref: …There's no need to worry about all that now. I've never been loved by anyone. I realized your emotions towards me were not love, they were just passion._**

 ** _–_** ** _Fairy Tail, Chapter 537, "The Power of Life"_**


	13. The most far-off horizons

Chapter 13

* * *

 ** _"_** ** _The abyss of magic. The beginning of everything. Such is the unifying magic, love._** ** _"_**

* * *

Zeref learned more about healing in three days than he did in the first six years of his life.

Their house was engulfed in smoke and flames. His parents – he had no way of even retrieving their bodies from the wreckage, and it made him retch with a sick, shuddering hollowed-out pain to _think_ of what they had felt in those long moments before –

It was pain, but not quite just that; all of the world was a cloak of agony, boring into his senses for every second in consciousness. He felt slow, and empty – wrung out of what was meant to be living and beating within, left with hollowed out trenches where blood once ran.

But Natsu.

Natsu was still breathing.

His breaths were shallow and labored, rattling off the walls of the cellar.

There was no luxury for rest. Day and night became completely foreign concepts, and turned into endless cycles of war – draws at first, then near losses, one after another – so close to losing that they came within the span of a breath, only to subsist by fighting tooth and nail to push back against the onslaught.

They were comrades on the same front, the only ones left standing on the field of a hopeless war. Zeref fought with every fiber of his being, every line of knowledge he had gleaned from the books and scrolls he had read beyond his age, pushing aside grief and weariness with a determination borne of desperation. It was as if their souls had been linked together, irrevocably, in the process. He could sense without a hitch when their invisible enemy was approaching, time and again – when it was gaining ground – and just how terrifying close it was from taking hold in the body next to his own –

Natsu fought by simply breathing.

He opened his eyes, once, and muttered something through cracked lips. Zeref pressed his head close, straining to hear him.

"Hurts," he rasped.

"I'll get you some water –"

Natsu made a weak sound of protest. It might be to stop him from leaving.

It might be something more.

"I'll make it stop, I promise," Zeref said. Cold dread eclipsed the tiny bout of relief he felt. "I promise, Natsu – please, just hold on a bit longer…"

Natsu mumbled something unintelligible, before his eyes drifted shut again.

With the last spell, he had managed to quench every weeping wound; regrew the blackened flesh and knitted every inch of damaged skin on the frail body before him, until it was good and whole as newborn. The light emanating from the spell illuminated the entire chamber with its intensity.

He had honestly believed he's succeeded.

And Natsu stopped breathing. And the weak, fluttering beats of his heart sounded their last.

Zeref had no memory of what came immediately after, throughout the years and centuries that followed. There seemed only to be a bleak void, and a silence more infinite than death itself.

A part of his mind had registered the facts – had even recalled the method, weeks later. But there was a black hole in his memory surrounding his first success, and no amount of dredging after had ever turned up with a hint of just how.

The sun was high when he staggered out into the light.

It felt inconceivable that only days ago, he had been more interested in tending to gardens.

* * *

Wind was tearing through the shrine, wild and vigorous, sending clouds of dust and chunks of rubbles their way. Zeref lifted an arm on instinct, but it dissipated before it could reach him, steering clear of the space around him to turn on all that lay beyond it.

Chronos was nowhere to be seen. Mavis was lying still on the floor a few feet away. Her eyes were closed, and her face was slack in relaxation. He lifted her gingerly at the neck, trying to shift her into a more comfortable position.

"Zeref."

An instinctive panic flared to life in him before he could identify the cause.

He had heard that voice before.

"…Zeira?"

A young girl with dark brown hair stood before him, her hands folded before her. Dust from rubbles the drifted undisturbed by her feet, as if she was walking on air and water.

"…What _are_ you?" He whispered, uncaring of courtesy.

"I am her friend." She nodded down at Mavis, like it was the simplest truth in the world. "She gave me this life… this consciousness to know my own gift, and feel it in return.

"It was serendipity. There was…a hole in her heart, but she believed in us…so I came into being, through her unique brand of light magic. I took on Zeira's identity – her personality, her memories…and her friendship. My will was my own – but I could not exist independently until she had let go of me. Perhaps…it'd be more accurate to say that I'm an imposter."

Zeref shook his head. "You are not an imposter. At the very least, you are real to her."

Zeira lowered her head. She seemed to have trouble meeting his eyes.

"That was…kind of you to say," she managed.

"It's the truth," he said. "She grieves for you."

She did not reply. He knew the expression she wore only too well. Her face was a cast of guilt and deep-set misery.

"You…" It occurred to him, then. "You led us to Mildian. Is there more to it than the truth behind this curse?"

"The truth is inconsequential," she said. "I never intended for this to happen – for you to confront him…" Her mouth twisted. "I thought…you'd have figured it out."

"You might have overestimated us, then," he said, drily. "What did you intend for us?"

She paused, as if she was searching for some way to phrase a difficult explanation, or perhaps bracing herself for it.

"Ankhseram blessed the youngest of his creations with mortality," she said. "Chronos blessed them with age that marks their passage in life. Those that trivialize their gifts are to be punished, in accordance to the laws of this land. But if your curse has not been proof enough, the ancient judgment spell ought to speak for itself. The gods execute these laws at their own discretion.

"As for we…" She hesitated, before going on. "Our gift was the last. It was not done in malice or goodwill – merely curiosity, towards these younger beings, possessing what we do not. There is no punishment for those who trivialize it, or reward for those who treasure it. This gift, in and of itself, is curse and blessing enough."

What Zeira was.

He had suspected it, only in passing. Mavis probably did, too – it was impossible for her to not have noticed the signs when he did. But there was no way of proving or disproving that theory, and it would not have mattered to her either way.

It didn't feel like it mattered, even now – when they had far more pressing concerns.

"The One Magic?" He asked.

"The One Magic," she agreed. "At its strongest, it transcends even time or death. And for that reason, they…we were – we became nothing more than figures of lost myths." She smiled, sad and small. "I cannot belong in the same world as she. That was seven years too many."

He looked up at her, eyes widening as an incredulous hope rose through him. "You mean…"

"You almost succeeded in breaking the curse, once. Ankhseram refused her claim to death. But he has yet to succeed in a take-over, and there's a limit to even what he can do. This age seal in Mildian was made by someone channeling the full power of Chronos. Here, your life forces are arrested. If they have drained, before he has the chance to restore it…"

A tight smile passed through her lips, so quick that he almost missed it. "Ankhseram ensured that no seal could steal your consciousness along with your senses – that there is no reprieve to be found from his curse. Fitting, that it should be what would free you in the end.

"I had been trying to reach Mavis, but she…had not reacted well." Her eyes were sad. "Those few seconds I saw you were all that counted, in the end. I was worried, for a while, that you might not have understood…but you did. You just did not want to tell her."

"I…" His head was spinning. There were spots swimming before his eyes, and he could feel his throat closing as he struggled to breathe.

The warmth in his hold felt heavy and unbearably light in simultaneity. He was struck by the sudden impulse to shove it away. But it couldn't possibly be, when he wanted more than anything to hold her close –

Zeira stood watching him, her face going blank. She saw the way he took in the revelation, without even the barest hint of joy – and a cold resignation steeped into her expression.

"You realized," she said, soft and unsurprised. "Maybe it was too much to hope that you haven't."

"You would – you would have me kill her without even _knowing_ –"

"Would that have been kinder?"

"No," he said on reflex, incapable of thought or comparison, "yes – I don't –"

But what stand did he have to blame her for it? Mavis was the only reason they had even spoken to each other. If it came down to a choice between them, she had every reason to care for her friend and none to do the same for him, to any fraction of that degree. She did not owe him anything.

"She does not love the way you do," Zeira said. "You must have realized, Zeref – since the time you first kissed. You have lived too long, seen too much, been too _alone_. Yet you love so deeply, so without reservation, that the entire world falls away whilst you are in its throes.

"But what is to be made of this love?

"Is it Mavis you are in love with? Or is it the kindness she has offered you? That first shred of compassion you've been wanting for, found to you at last, where no one else in this world ever had – nor ever will – understand the true depth of your suffering?"

The answer prowled somewhere within his mind, mired in contradictions. Mavis, or hope or kindness or acceptance or love or _light_ , or even the barest hint of anything good he was undeserving of this world, yet still unquenchably longed for – they were one and the _same._ They did not feel as if they were separable concepts.

"I…I don't know," he said, at last. "…Does it matter? We can never have anyone, besides each other…"

"But do you love _her_?" A hard edge entered Zeira's voice. ""Chronos realized that you have a way out. He's taking down the seal as we speak. If you can end her suffering, here and now – would you?"

He could not bring himself to meet her eyes.

He knew what he would see if he did.

If she had read the truth in his face.

"Would you rather have come at another time?" She said, low and enticing, when he did not reply.

"Don't." The sound clawed itself out from the back of his throat.

"You would rather if you could wait," Zeira said, stone cold, without a trace of condemnation or sympathy. "Years. Decades. _Centuries_. Wait for the wheels of time to crush every last connection she has with this world. Wait for them to erode the last light of innocence in her eyes away – just as they once came for yours. _Wait_ , until there is no one, no reason, _nothing_ left at all for her –"

"Stop it," he muttered. Her words were hewing straight into his skull and he had no way to stem the splitting pain building with it, could do nothing but _listen_ –

"…Until all you have is each other. And then, maybe _then_ …she would know love with the same desperation as you do…"

"Stop it – _stop it_ –"

"What does it matter to you, as long as you don't have to be alone anymor–"

" _Shut up!_ "

Mavis stirred. He flinched.

Zeira fell silent. He could sense her gaze as both of them watched for her movement with baited breaths.

She did not wake. Her breaths were long and even, and her expression was more peaceful than he had ever seen in her.

He knew he would not survive it a second time.

He could not be certain if he had even survived the first.

For a brief moment, blissful and terrifying in equal measure, his mind drew up a complete blank as he tried to recall what Zeira had been saying. All he knew was an unnamed dread seizing him past the haze of dissonance, and the urge to stop her, somehow.

He could – he could rouse Mavis, and she would leave. But his limbs had turned to lead, and he sat, frozen, unable to carry through with even that.

"I'm not meant to be in this realm," Zeira said. Her voice was subdued, but there was a hint of cold anger in it. "After she made me…I knew she would raise their ire. I hid for seven years on Tenrou – I could have remained hidden until she's let go of her friend, and leave in peace. Lost magics do not just interfere with the domains of gods, Zeref. They draw _directly_ from their power. If it wasn't for her tribute, Ankhseram would never have found out."

He stared at her, too startled to register it, at first. "He chose her…I thought he…"

"He doesn't need another vessel," she cut him off. "He did it to punish, and _you_ _led her to him!_ "

Ice crawled through his veins, stabbing like daggers against their confines. The edges of his vision whited out as a strange tingling built in his head.

"No – no, that wasn't fair of me." She sounded regretful – almost appalled. "You had no way of knowing. I'm –"

"It wasn't fair, but you were right." He heard himself say. "Whatever Ankhseram cursed her for, it would never have happened if I had not taught her that spell. If she…if she had never met me…"

Mavis shifted again. Whether they willed it or otherwise, she was on the cusp of waking.

"It won't work." He latched fast to the thought the moment it occurred to him. "This curse works in contradictions. The first time, when she told me…that desperation can't be replicated. Knowing that I – that it would – _I_ _can't_."

"How much do you want her to live," Zeira asked, quiet and ready, as if she had been expecting the protest – "now that you know she can die?"

In that instant, he hated her more than even Ankhseram or Chronos.

"You know what Mavis would choose, if she knew," Zeira said, imploring now, an added note of urgency to it. "You know what she would have done in your place."

He did. There was no doubt or question to it, and the very thought made him want to curl up and shrivel away, and never so much as meet her eyes when she woke again.

"If you choose to omit the truth, Zeref – if you never reveal to her that she's had this chance…Then _lie_ , and pray that you can lie well enough for the rest of your immortal lives."

The worst part was that she sounded like she honestly hoped he could.

"…How much time do we have?" He asked, almost inaudible.

There was stark relief in Zeira's eyes, and an earnest, loathsome gratitude with it.

"A seal of this magnitude takes time to undo, even for a god," she said, gesturing above them, and he noticed the sinking sun, burning low in the sky for the first time.

"Until that light goes out."

She faded like a flickered-out candle before he could conjure a reply.

* * *

Long years later, when Natsu blinked his eyes open, Zeref did not weep in joy or grief or relief.

He leaned forward, ignoring the chill of the hard stone floor pressing against his knees, and said – gently, as if in prayer, composed as if in greeting –

"My name is Zeref Dragneel. I am your older brother."

 _Break me, that I may never be whole enough to hurt again._

 _This is your birthright._

* * *

She had the same curse as he.

From the moment Yuriy touched the Tenrou Jade, he was a dead man walking. But Mavis Vermillion executed a spell she had only learned for days flawlessly, separating his life force from a cursed artifact through her force of will alone. And by some impossible chance, she succeeded in reclaiming a life where it was not meant to be.

Ankhseram knew.

And she was immortal now, just like him.

Pleased, he told her.

She ran off crying. Tears of terror and disbelief ran down her face.

It mattered not. She would see the truth, eventually, and she would return to him when she did.

 _I have a title now. They call me the Fairy Strategist. It suits me, don't you think?_

A prodigy in magic, just as he was – with raw talent and ambition enough to make a powerful ally. Alvarez would not hurt for the addition of a strategist.

Their paths had crossed but twice before they entwined. There was no escape from this fate.

All he needed to do was to find her again, as soon as he could.

Then, he would have someone to tread the fires of this hell with him.

* * *

"First you asked me to play nice. Then you asked me to teach. What's next? Lullabies?"

"I'm not a fit guardian for him."

"I don't babysit," Igneel said, dismissive. "You just need a firmer hand with him. Crying every time he refuses to study isn't working."

"But of course," Zeref said coldly, ignoring the jibe. "I can let him grow up in my care. Let him watch me kill everything that comes within our sight. Let him figure out how to deal with my insanity. Let him see for himself what kind of monster I am, and maybe he'll be considerate enough to do me the favor of –"

It occurred to him that he had said more than was wise.

"You can shut up now," Igneel said, his expression thunderous. "I'll take him. Because you are absolute right – you are not a fit guardian. So you want your weapon to have a childhood? He'll have it, _from me_."

Zeref smiled. "My weapon? Hypocritical of you, when we are already doing the same with the others in our plan. It is a matter of convenience –"

"Stop antagonizing me on purpose," Igneel growled out.

It stunned him into momentary silence.

"You sound already convinced that you'll be his enemy," Igneel said, sounding like he was trying to rein in his temper. "What is it with you?"

A loud shriek sounded in the far distance. Down the slope, Gajeel bowled Natsu over by the advantage of his size. Natsu clutched at his hair, trying to get in a lucky hit in retaliation.

"I hope he makes it slow," he said all of a sudden, unable to help himself, regretting it instantly.

"Why?" Igneel looked irritated, rather than fazed or appalled. "Does it appeal to your sense of poetic justice?"

"It was what I did to him."

He waited for the anger, or disbelief – for the condemnation to come. But silence stretched on, long and uncharacteristic, until that recklessness deserted him altogether – leaving nothing but a growing dread in its wake.

"You know," Igneel said, at last. "If I took everything that came out of that mouth of yours for what it was, you'd be a crisp the first time we met."

Zeref sighed. "I apologized."

"Yes. That too. You told me your name, offered no explanation for anything, and somehow you act surprised when it blows up in your face. Surprised and upset."

"In my defence," he said, half-smiling, "I wasn't that sure you couldn't kill me at the time."

"I would do it for you, if I could," Igneel offered with surprising seriousness. "I think it's already been slow for you."

"…I know."

"Just one thing," Igneel enunciated. "Tell Natsu."

"No!" Fear overcame him for the first time. "You can't. He won't believe you –"

"If you are so set on destroying yourself," Igneel said with forced patience, as if he was explaining something explicitly simple to a child. "At least let him know who you are first. Let him be the one to decide if you are truly beyond saving, Zeref, because I sure as hell don't trust _you_ to do it."

"I thought...you meant…" He swallowed. "Yes, I…of course. I was going to tell him, even if you hadn't asked."

Igneel gave him an odd look, like he didn't quite believe him.

There was one last truth Natsu had to know. Resurrecting his brother for this twisted purpose was one thing, but having him walk unknowingly to his death for the sake of striking down an enemy went beyond that cruelty.

He was still sane enough to wonder what Igneel would do, if he knew Natsu's life was tethered to his own.

Summer died, slow and lingering, the leaves turning over the span of long weeks.

Autumn rolled by, a thick carpet of fallen leaves beneath spreading canopies of red and brown and orange.

Winter came around, harsh and bitter. Snow drafted unrelentingly as the wind howled liked an anguished beast throughout the night. Cries rang hauntingly through the wastelands left behind by the war, and no amount of magic could barrier the sounds out of his mind.

Seasons of death turned to seasons of rejuvenation, and then to death again.

Spring arrived. Summer died, slow and lingering. Autumn rolled by with a thick carpet of fallen leaves. Winter came around, with its drafting snow and howling winds.

He did not know how long _future_ was meant to be when they walked through the gate.

Spring arrived. Summer died. Autumn rolled by. Winter came around –

Death and rejuvenation and death again.

Spring and summer and autumn and winter

* * *

Summer died.

* * *

"I will accept all of you!" Mavis grasped at his shoulders with surprising strength for her emaciated frame. "There must be a way of breaking this curse. So don't give up…"

There was a fierce light burning in her eyes. Her chin was set in determination.

She was crying. And still, she was trying to offer him hope with her promise.

Tears blurred his eyes. His heart thumped with a frightening force in his chest, as warmth rose in his cheeks. He had never felt an emotion as such before – and it terrified and enthralled him, all at once.

"Let's find it…together." Mavis said, smiling through her tears.

It would be long years before the nightmares stop coming for her, the way they did for him – when she had grown so used to waking from them that it made no true difference from waking from restful sleep.

It would be longer, still, before she found out that the dreams of happier times were what she should fear the most.

There was a time, once – a time that felt like eons ago – when he had prolonged the pain of someone he loved. Not for the pitfall of a misplaced confidence, but because he was desperate, and selfish, and more than anything, he wanted them to live.

More than anything in this world.

He looked at her. It was not enough, to live on with a memory for the future undetermined, to hope that it would last with him even through the worst of his insanity, until death deigned to extend its mercy to him as well. To live on for a year, a decade, a century more – praying that time might refrain from erasing every last detail of the way she spoke or loved or laughed.

It was not enough.

She had given him more in this life than he had ever dared to hope for – ever deserved – and still it wasn't enough. It had made him ungrateful, now; had made him greed for even more. In a brief moment of indulgence, he allowed the image of the future she had once promised him to unfurl itself in his mind, and knew – _knew_ , without any room for cowardice or denial, that it was not his happiness to have.

Zeref pressed her head against his chest, hiding her expression, and his own from her. He breathed, long and shallow, light against the crown of her head.

If he was the one who had condemned her to this fate of darkness, then he should be the one to free her into the light.

 _We can break this curse,_ he said to her.

His voice did not sound like his own.

* * *

 ** _"_** ** _Love makes miracles. And, at times, it is also capable of calamities. The love of two afflicted with the curse of contradiction…brought forth one final contradiction. The curse that causes one to steal life, the more one loves it…stole away my supposedly immortal own."_**

 ** _–_** ** _Fairy Tail, Chapter 450, "Alone in All the World"_**


	14. Call out and take my hand

Chapter 14

 _Love is not a sin_.

A century later, when she told their story to her family, such was the condolence she received in return.

They believed she had fallen in love without knowing what he was. How could she possibly have? That man was the incarnation of evil itself. It had been a moment of fallibility – of desperation. Two souls that drawn upon each other for the only warmth they could find.

Of course they would forgive her for it.

Of course they did.

But she never meant to fling open the sole window of light into his life, and shatter it just as he was reaching for the sun. And for that, she knew that he would walk the remaining years away across the fractured glass of her promise, and _bleed_ for it – as quick and certain as her bare soles did against the unforgiving earth.

Love might not be a sin.

Yet, throughout all of time, they had been punished for it harsher than any other crime of this world.

* * *

She shoved him back.

"No," she said, shaking. Every other word fled from her mind – " _No!_ "

There was no reluctance or gratitude to it. In that instant, she was so furious that she could barely speak.

Zeref watched her without speaking, his expression stunned, then regretful. He watched, without questioning her outburst, without any attempt at explanation or protest.

The look in his eyes –

She never wanted to see that look in his eyes again.

"I wished," she whispered, because he would not ask, the illusion of a perfect end crumbling with every word – "I wished my friends would not have to keep guessing…you promised me they will not."

And she had not even suspected.

She almost had not suspected. She would have died, believing it to be a shared mercy for them till her final breath.

"Why?" It came out in a near whimper, nothing like the scream building within her. "Why would you _do this_?"

The sun was sinking down to a bare sliver of light, catching in the side of his face.

"Mavis," he said, quietly, averting the question. "Let me. We are running out of time –"

"I don't care!"

"Ankhseram," he said over her, and the sudden appearance of that name stunned her, for a second. "He doesn't need you. You should never have been cursed. If I hadn't taught –"

"I. Don't. _Care_ ," she bit out with a snarl, her fury returning with a vengeance.

It made no sense at all. If it was what he believed, he should have seen an enemy in Ankhseram, in those gods that had seen fit to toy with their fates, like she had. But – so typical of his way of thinking – he only seemed to have seen an enemy in himself.

It only occurred to her, then, that she had wept and broken down and steeled herself for the worst – and only then had he been willing to tell her there was another solution.

No. Not a _solution_. Not even close.

But he had been willing to offer it to her, in the end.

How long had he known, and struggled, before that?

A cold, washed-out wave of understanding doused over her.

"…Was that what she told you?"

"No," he said, automatically.

"What did she _tell_ you?"

She leaned forward without warning, grasping his shoulders.

Zeref flinched at the touch. His lips parted as he made to answer, but he couldn't. Whatever lie he meant to give, whatever he wanted so desperately to tell her, he could not bring himself to do so – even as he shook with the effort for it. A sheen of tears flooded into his eyes.

"…Please."

She thought it was an attempt at denial, at first.

"This is the only chance you have." His breath hitched. "It's your _only chance_. So please…"

It was too dark to make out his expression, even at this distance. She would never know how he found the will for it.

" _No_ ," Mavis repeated, emphatic. Tears stung her eyes. "No, you can't. Now I know – you can't, I won't let you –"

The last of the sun was fast disappearing – a bare pinprick of light, dying out swifter than embers left to the rain. A strangled sound made its way out of him. He was struggling in her grip, as if locked in war against his own body.

"I wouldn't even try to harm myself before you," she said. "What makes you think I can do this to you now?"

There was a long beat of stillness, frozen in inaction, when she thought she had gotten through to him – before it shattered.

"I'm sorry," Zeref gasped out. There was a frightful desperation to the sound, like he was forcing it through waterlogged lungs as he drowned. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry – _I'm sorry_ –"

They had run out of time.

She could not bring herself to regret it.

He was falling to pieces before her, and not even in the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind, sealed away with all its clawing guilt and malevolence and unending _pain_ , could she find it in herself to regret missing her only chance to die.

" _Don't_ ," Mavis choked out. "I don't want to die anymore. Not like this."

"You didn't know."

The sound slipped out of him, impossibly small, almost drowned out entirely in the howling wind. She had to strain to catch any of it.

"When I found out you were cursed, I was – you never knew, you were crying – you were crying and _I was_ _pleased_ that I wasn't alone anymore –"

It was the truth. She could see that, even as he confessed it. She had no way of knowing what had passed through his mind, back then.

And even if she had – she could not possibly have resented him for it.

But she knew, now, that he would.

She cradled her head in her arms.

"I forgive you," she whispered. "I forgive you."

He went limp in her hold like a marionette with its strings cut.

* * *

Mavis sat for what felt to be an immeasurably long time. There was a strange contentment burying itself into her chest, settling its way down to the tip of her bare toes. Stealing away her will, or perhaps ability to move as it sank.

The wind died down. When the familiar void descended upon them again, fear did not manage to find her as it once did.

Light pulsed to life around them, then; one after another, still and clustered like fallen constellation. The circle came into view slowly, as they washed away the inky blackness – the trespassed boundary between a forgotten, abandoned world, and one that seemed no less oppressing than what they had escaped.

Dazed, she blinked and turned away, but they were closed in on all sides. There was a sinister hue to that prison of light. Despite knowing it was through a skewed lens that she saw it, now, she found it hard to believe she could ever have found hope to the sight, only earlier in this day.

Zeref shifted against her, a minute movement.

"Just rest," she said.

He shook his head very slightly, struggling to keep his eyes open.

"It's all right," she murmured. She ran a soothing hand through his hair, pressing down on the nape of his neck. "Just rest."

She could tell that he was fighting a losing battle. His body was shutting down of its own accord. If he had been holding out on his fatigue by sheer will, for however long he had, he just exhausted the last of it.

She set him down gently to a more comfortable position. The moon was setting low in the sky, the night fading visibly into softer tints. The ground was still damp to the touch; tiny white mushrooms dotted the dead grass around them, barely visible on the cusp of dawn. All of them had withered.

Less than a full day had passed since the last time they saw the fairy ring. They had made the sensible decision – the best decision they could, with what they were given.

They had learnt everything they possibly could, given this situation. And still she wished, fiercely, almost venomously, that they had never gone on their quest.

"Zeira?" Mavis muttered, keeping her voice low. "You are still here, right?"

There was no response, or any sign that might be considered equivalent to such; merely the soughing of wind through the forest of towering glyphs around them, cold and lamenting.

"Thank you." Keeping her tone level. "For being there, even when I did not know. For trying to save me.

"You gave me a way out when I wanted nothing more than dying. Not because there is nothing I desire out of life – far from it – but because at the time, it had seemed like the only way to stop the pain.

"But I do not want it at the cost of his. I never wanted that."

 _Not now, certainly. But in a decade_ – _a century_ –?

 _An eternity._

She swallowed.

It wasn't fair. They were friends – the first and closest. It shouldn't have to feel like she was going into war.

None of this was fair.

"I trusted you with my fate…and with his. It was my mistake. I grew too used to fighting against the same enemy with everyone I love. I didn't realize…it never occurred to me that I would have to protect them from each other, one day."

But she shouldn't have to choose.

"I won't make that mistake again."

Words carried weights of their own. They could maim, or heal – or kill, in every way that mattered, if needed. Was that not what she had learnt after the abandonment of her first friend, as she wept and wished in vain that she could simply forget the truth of it again, deluded as it would make her?

Had Zeira hesitated at all, before she struck the killing blow?

She didn't want to know.

Perhaps she never would.

Weariness descended over her like a crashing tide. She couldn't find it in herself to be angry, even now. Maybe it made her a hypocrite, pretending at forgiveness she didn't feel – or it was merely a delay of the inevitable, and she would weep over it, after all, at a later time.

If she could find the grief for it. And then – only if she could be certain that he would not see her cry, to count on him being as imperceptive as she was.

"Don't _ever_ ," she said, "use me to hurt him like this again."

It sounded closer to a plea than a command.

The air shifted before her, tremulous, almost like a physical sigh.

She heard it, then – there was a soft, rustling sound, loud against the silence.

Mavis turned back.

Zeref was looking at her, his face blank. As if he had been awake all along.

"Did you…" She hoped he hadn't. That one-sided conversation wasn't anything she needed to hide from him, but it wasn't anything he needed to be reminded of, either.

"You promised," he said, not in answer.

"I…Zeref?" She muttered, hesitantly.

He did not move or reach for her. Just stared back at her, expression still unnervingly blank.

"You promised me." He repeated, with more fervency. "You promised me you would stay."

"…I know," she said, helplessly. "I promised –"

"You promised me." He didn't sound like he even believed she was there. "Please, you promised – _you_ _promised_ –"

Mavis wrung her arm around the back of his neck to pull him closer, until she could feel the heat of his breath, beating against her neck. Her pulse sounded unbearably loud to herself, rocking through her entire body.

"I am here," she said between suppressed sobs, barely able to hear herself past the pang in her chest, not knowing how to make him _believe_. Sharp pincers of fear clenched at her, so tight in that instant she was almost convinced of a physical wound to match the sensation.

She had been struck by the sum of all the pain in her life, and somehow, the silent burn of his tears on her skin hurt worse, now.

The sun was climbing. A bare sliver of light above the horizon, throwing warmth that chased the last lingering chill of the night away.

"You are real?"

He sounded quiet, even then – even now. She couldn't understand what it took to master that kind of despair. It felt inhumane.

"I am," she said. "I swear."

He fell silent again. His breaths sounded easier than they did, when he was looking at her, some perception of reality having returned.

"I am sorry." She whispered. "Back then, if only…if only I had –"

"Don't be," Zeref said after a brief moment, his voice low with an undertone of dread. "What you feel is…it's yours alone. I would never ask –"

"You _knew_ I didn't. How could you possibly not hate me?"

"You can't fault yourself for not loving _enough_. And… it wouldn't have worked on my end. I wanted you to live only because I knew I would. Is that not more selfish than wanting to be together in death?"

She felt like she was being stabbed.

"No," she said quietly. "That's the opposite of selfish."

She paused to take in his expression. The surprise in it saddened her in a way she didn't know she could still be.

"I doubted you, when it counted most," she muttered.

Zeref leaned back slightly, trying to grasp what she had confessed.

"You should," he said. "After what you've seen…"

"It's not what I meant," she said. "I…"

She couldn't bring herself to say it again. Without the veil of impending death, her private misgivings felt unbearably small, compared to the weight of those brutal deaths in the circle they stood, deserving or otherwise – not to mention unfounded, in light of the aftermath.

"Can…can I kiss you?" She asked instead.

He started.

"Your eyes," she whispered. "Just your eyes."

Zeref's face slackened with surprise, before he nodded. His eyes slid closed.

She pressed her fingers against the back of his head. Every feature in his face was open and trusting.

Left. Then right. Then left again. Right, again.

"You have kind eyes," she murmured.

His eyes were shaking. Or perhaps he was.

"You still…think so?" His voice was shaking, as well.

Left. Then the right. Then the left, again.

"You have kind eyes," she said, firmer.

She could feel the sting of salt on her cracked lips.

"I am," he muttered, "I am grateful, every day, to have met you. But I never wanted…"

The crushing weight of a black future, ceaseless in its rejection, lay out ahead in its entirety once more – like an abyss inverted over them, stifling every breath she drew.

The world was not kind. And for them, it would never be.

"If we had never met each other," she said. "Then my friends…Fairy Tail would never have existed. Maybe you weren't wrong, to think I'd be happier. But that would have been the life of someone different."

It was not kind.

But it was what they had.

"You don't have to plead for my love, Zeref," she said, soft and unhesitant. "You've never had to. And I am sorry, for giving you cause to believe otherwise."

 _Never_ , she promised herself. _Never again._

"I wish I could be the person you thought I was," he muttered, looking like he was fighting to keep from opening his eyes, to catch some hint of her response. "I'm not _good_ the way you are, Mavis. You…you care, so deeply, for even those least worthy of it…"

"No," she said over him. "Even after what you have lived through, after all that you've lost, after how long you've been alone – and you _still love_ , so unreservedly. You love, even when you've been punished for it all your life. You've given me courage, just by being here."

"Mavis…"

"You are tired," she murmured. "And in pain, and not entirely sane anymore. But you've been fighting for so long. You are still fighting, even now. Don't discount that."

She brought their foreheads together. His eyes flew open in surprise.

"This curse, it does not just kill," she said, leaning away. "It demolishes goodwill in a person. It hollows them away until there is nothing left. Vessel – a vessel meant to be emptied, meant to house another soul…that was its intention, wasn't it? I remember what Chronos said. Life or death, good or evil, faith or heresy. None of them could stand against time.

"But he did not mention it. Had they understood, Chronos wouldn't be trapped by someone desperate to save her people for centuries. And perhaps, then…"

Perhaps, if he understood why kindness could break a person where the worst of cruelty failed, Ankhseram would never have allowed her to live.

"The One Magic," Zeref said in understanding. "The origin of all. It can be a powerful motivator for good, but it can also drive the despairing and misguided into darkness."

Mavis nodded.

In this place, courage had deserted her, once, when she was complacent to find solace from the knowledge of being loved alone.

But she realized, now, that it wasn't enough.

"Will you tell me," she asked, inhaling, "about you? Just – tell me your side of the story. Tell me why the world believes you a monster, and why you came to believe it of yourself."

Zeref hesitated, before setting his jaw in determination.

He reached for the pendant at his neck. There was such care to the motion as he lifted it that it seemed almost as if he had carved out his heart along.

She watched with baited breath. He took her hand and pressed the pendant into it.

Mavis closed it in her palms. The lingering warmth on the metal felt almost scalding on her skin.

"I have a younger brother," he said to her.

If he could know what the expression he held now looked like, to the eyes of another, she thought – he would never have the audacity to claim himself unworthy of love again.


	15. The first light of dawn

Chapter 15: The first light of dawn

Zeref turned the pendant over in his hand, closing a loose fist around it. He clicked the latch shut, eyes soft and downcast.

Mavis looked to his face. She found herself wondering what his parents looked like. Had they resembled him? How much did he remember of their faces, if at all?

She couldn't; the memories of her own childhood with them had been more ghost than real, for all its irony. Barely more than two decades had gone by since they left her, with so much of them written over by the tales which came after – and thinking of them still left a hollow pain in her chest.

But there was still her family. They were there – alive, and well, or at least she hoped they were. So much more than a pale memory displaced in time.

 _They didn't know_. The thought sliced clean, stopping her cold.

Where she was. Why she had run…

Why Rita had died, on a day she should have been most ready to celebrate life.

But he didn't have the chance. Not even the chance to dread their rejection and disdain, since the last of them had left without him. The wait laid ahead for him, long and uncertain, as much a beacon of light as a hanging axe.

He had been waiting for hundreds of years, when she had a choice right before her, if only she had the courage to take it. And if she should have to grieve in a century, when they left, eventually – it was all the more reason to do so while she still could.

She didn't want to sit in the dark and wait for someone to come to her, anymore.

She wanted to reach out. To revive that optimistic faith again. To trust that there was still hope, fluttering beneath the lid of this accursed box they had opened.

To take another's hand, and tell him: _come with me, for I know what it feels like to be stranded in the dark. I know. And I see you. It will never stop haunting us, but I still have strength enough to help you_.

Just as he had done for her – as they had done for each other, the first and last times they met. He had taught them magic in gratitude for her kindness, when he was only a stranger she stumbled upon. The last time they met, when he found her wandering and alone, and offered her the only refuge he knew, she had found the strength to give hope in the face of sorrow even deeper than her own. Whether it had been fate, or whatever higher power that had arranged for their paths to cross, this cycle of reciprocity was _theirs_.

She had done it then, with nothing left to lose. She could do it now, with so much more to gain.

"You have a way of contacting Alvarez, right?" Mavis asked. "You chose not to respond, when they tried to reach you. That means you could, if you wanted."

"Do you still want to return there?" Zeref asked. "Knowing what had driven it to prosper?"

"We'll have to do it eventually, I suppose," she said. "Their loyalty to you is genuine. That knowledge…doesn't have to change things. Not the way you feared, at least…"

"I know," he said, briskly.

He looked discomfited by where the conversation was heading. It was the one place in this world that didn't reject him for the curse. Yet he had only ever returned there when he stopped caring for life – to protect them, and to redirect his attention. It was his safe place to remain detached while staving off the blunt edge of isolation, knowing that every familiar face was destined to age and waste away.

"It's kept you sane for this long. You shouldn't have to give it up," she amended. "I was thinking…maybe we don't have to go there, just yet. I'm not ready, and neither are you."

"What do you mean?"

"Teach me the spell you used," she said. "I…I have another place in mind. You haven't been there before. But I can take you there, if I learn it."

It hadn't been what he was expecting. That much was obvious. "Another place?"

"Tenrou Island. It's where I was born, but no one is living on it now. When Fairy Tail was founded…I made it the sacred island of my guild, to be placed under its protection." She bit down hard on her lip, steeling herself. "My friends. They'll need to know about us, just in case – if there's any way I can reach them…"

"You…" Zeref caught on a beat later, looking stunned. "You want to tell them?"

"They'll understand," she replied, quietly – and then, with more conviction as she realized that those words had rung true, and hope began filling her again, "I believe in them. I can't see them in person again, but…I can do this much, right?"

A crease formed between his eyes. It was not an unfamiliar look on him. For a horrible instant, she was reminded of what happened the last time she claimed her trust.

 _And if they don't?_ The acerbity of the thought startled her. _If they decide that what you've done is beyond acceptance, and no explanation you could offer could ever be good enough for them?_

She would spend every waking moment up till then worrying over the best way to put the truth to them, praying for the best outcome at its end. It was what she asked for, and no one had ever won a war by expecting to emerge the loser.

But she would not walk into it without being prepared for the worst again. She couldn't afford it. Even in the worst of times, the belief that they had nothing left to lose had proven false.

"Of course. It's easy enough," Zeref said, breaking the reverie. "It's just…"

"I'll be careful," she assured. "You don't have to come up in this, unless…"

"No." He sounded surprised. "It's not a bad idea to exercise caution, I suppose, if you are worried about how they may react. I just meant to say that…with your brand of magic, there may be a way for you to meet them in person. If that's what you want."

Mavis blinked.

"…Oh," she said, sighing out the word.

She hadn't quite expected the powerful surge of gratitude which accompanied her understanding.

* * *

Yuriy unfolded the parchment again, bringing it up to eye level with both hands. It was thin from a few attempts at rereading too many, and tried to curl up every time he loosened his grip.

Precht scowled at him over the long table, still scattered with uncleared dishes. The table groaned under his hands when he leaned forward, now bearing the brunt of his weight. In his armor and eye-patch, he made a formidable image beneath the shining guild mark.

"Are you _sure_?" He demanded in a gravelly voice.

Yuriy stared back at him.

"It's her handwriting," he said, irritated. "Besides, who else would know about Tenrou?"

Seemingly satisfied with the explanation, Precht directed his glare back at Warrod. The man was still standing next to the open window, fawning over their messenger with bits of leftover cereal from breakfast.

No one was certain how it managed to carry something almost its equal in weight.

The tiny thing resembled a blackbird, sleek-feathered and beady-eyed, down to the way it hopped about the narrow sill in impatience, except he had never seen a bird bearing such an unimpressed look in his life.

"So, who's going?" Yuriy asked at last. "I'd rather settle it _before_ we board the ship this time, if you know what I mean."

Precht raised an eyebrow in challenge.

"We still need someone to stay behind and look after guild affairs," Yuriy said, slowly, "and you're kind of the acting guild master, so…"

As if on cue, a loud crash reverberated through the room, followed by a high-pitched, impossibly prolonged _shriek_ – a noise which couldn't have escaped from anywhere but the gates of Hell itself. Yuriy made a mad dash for the source of the commotion, cursing under his breath as he went.

"Language," Precht reminded flatly after him.

He stalked off to pack without another word.

Warrod picked up the bird gently. It gave him a long-suffering look, like drama from the recipients was something it had been enduring for centuries.

"You too, huh?" He muttered in sympathy.

* * *

Even in the fairest of weather, the swell and fall of waves surrounding the Tenrou Island swerved wild and erratic. They lapped and lashed against the side of the hull, but the rented ship sailed on, miraculously smooth in its volatile waters, as if guided by the hand of some invisible force granting for their safe passage. Its protection had been laid for secrecy and not inconvenience, by their own hand, and it was with no small degree of pride that he noticed how it was working in their favor now.

Nonetheless, there was nothing to stop the humid air from lingering uncomfortably against the exposed skin, sinking into clothes already heavy from the soak of sweat and beating sea.

Neither of them complained on the way, but it was a close thing. Precht was overdressed as usual and too proud to fix it, a fact which Yuriy mock about, _at length_ , later. But even in the casual wear he was in, his own breath rang short in comparison.

When they finally pierced through the fog of the magical barrier, and the shade of the towering Tenrou Tree came within sight, he was almost ready to swim the rest of the distance in gratitude.

The library stood as he remembered, three stories of arcing walls of stone bricks, worn and perforated over the decades since its construction. The gates opening to its front yard were half-shrouded by shrubbery, with lush trees and knee-high bushes flanking the flagstone path leading towards the entrance. Ivy crept and tugged at cracks in the stonework, twirling all the way up to the attic window.

For all its familiarity, there was something noticeably different to the air of this place, but he could not discern it. Perhaps it had seemed a little less run-down, or a little more lively, the last he had seen of it – but then, that could only be expected for a time so long since.

"You left him," said Precht once he had caught his breath, "to babysit. Your baby. Your own _flesh and blood_ –"

"It's what babysitters _do_ ," Yuriy bit out, finally hitting his wits' end. This wasn't about Markarov, not really. It was about the toll even this brief trip had taken on his health, even though neither of them would come out and voice it.

"It's _Warrod_." Precht used the name like an adjective. "It's been _proven_ that between the two of them, he's the one more likely to get himself stuck in a well."

Yuriy sighed, biting back a snide remark on whether Precht would rather be stuck with the duty himself. The heavy double doors groaned as he shoved them open. Distractedly, he wondered if they should have knocked first.

"You make it sound as if I'm any better at parenting than him," he said, mostly because he knew it was the fastest way to shut down the conversation.

"Hey."

Before them, Mavis gave a tiny, hesitant wave. The dark drapes of curtain behind her were drawn back to let the sun in. Soft morning light flooded into the reading room through the open window, leaving the air lukewarm, turning skin and wood bright with warm radiance.

She looked exactly as she did the last time they saw her, in a pink dress with a band of blue diamonds patterned over the midriff, pale blonde hair cascading down her back. Her feet still dangled a good deal above the ground from where she sat atop the hardwood table, and even that was familiar – like the way they used to hang from the long table in their hall.

As if it wasn't enough that time had marked her no more in absence than it did in life. In this place, where she had once beaten Yuriy at his own game, she seemed almost like an apparition plucked straight out of his memory.

"Hey yourself," Yuriy said thickly, snapping out of his daze. "Dear god, we missed you so much, do you have any _idea_ –"

His outspread arms passed right through her. Behind him, Precht made a sharp sound of surprise.

"Ah. Sorry, I…I forgot," he said, apologetic. He could feel Precht's glare burning holes into his back. She must have warned them at least some thirty times, and even then, predicted the precaution to be necessary. "Is this an illusion?"

"An astral projection," she corrected. "I can hear and see you like this. It took some time to figure out…I'm sorry I didn't manage it sooner."

She smiled at them. He could tell that she was trying to do it like she used to, but it was wan with the strain of obvious effort. Her eyes were old. They had always been older than she was, but there was a heavier tint to that age, now. She looked exhausted, and the realization made something clench in his chest.

The first month had been the worst. He ran himself to the ground between the funeral and the search. The last physician they had dragged him to told them that he wasn't knocking years off his life; he was shaving entire decades off it.

That was six months ago. He had promised them, after that. Because _Markarov_ , and because they kept trying, day by day, to convince him that _no news is good news_ , and they didn't deserve having someone constantly implying that he believed otherwise. And – even in the blackest of his grief, he remembered that he had no right to cast away a life bought with her sacrifice.

But on some days, he knew there was still the look in his face that made even Precht wary of agitating him. He would try, for their sake – but it might not be enough.

"I'm sorry," she said again. Real and in person, right before them, like all the times he had dared to imagine this day.

He realized, then, that she understood. All of it. Yet, she had still chosen to stay away.

"Mavis." Precht stepped forward. "We've been searching everywhere since you ran off. We never blamed you for what happened…"

It wasn't the whole truth; not quite. Her absence had very nearly torn them apart. They had no reason to blame her for Rita's passing, but even Warrod, the most even-tempered one amongst them, had lashed out at least once in the air of hurt confusion following her disappearance.

"You didn't know what happened," she said.

It took so little to get her on the verge of tears. There used to be a time when they poked fun at it.

"We didn't," Yuriy admitted. "But now we do, and it still wasn't your fault. If anything…it's mine. You warned me not to touch the jade. I thought –" He broke off. "You are far too forgiving for your own good, you know?"

"That was ages ago," Precht cut in, surprisingly harsh. "Drop it. We agreed the matter's _settled_."

"Yeah, but –"

"It wasn't _anyone_ 's fault," Mavis said, unyieldingly. Her tone was surprisingly vehement despite the statement. "None of us knew things would turn out the way they did. I don't regret it, Yuriy."

She wiped a stray tear away from her face. He hadn't realized that illusions could cry, or understood what she meant by her correction, but if this was a projection of her person…

"If you are casting this," Yuriy gestured vaguely around them. "You're somewhere on this island, right?"

Mavis dipped her head in acknowledgement. There was tense wariness in her expression. If he hadn't been so desperate to hear his doubts answered, he might have questioned it.

"Will you stay, this time? If you can't stay around the guild…then at least somewhere we can find you?"

"…Yes," she nodded. Her voice was subdued when she spoke, and her eyes were unnaturally bright. "I was hoping that…that I can. "

None of them spoke for a long moment, in the wake of her statement.

"This place was your home," Precht said at last. His voice was laced with incredulity. "We are _your_ guild. Of course _you_ _can_."

More than a decade ago, fresh after the loss that had cost an eye out of Precht, she had worn that same look of simmering guilt when she volunteered to fetch them water. Like she was latching on to the only task she could find and trust herself not to screw up. Less than an hour later saw her return with reinvigorated cheer and a teacher for them in tow. How she had managed to find one out in the middle of nowhere was anyone's guess, really. Now, however, Yuriy prayed silently for that luck to work in her favor, once more; he was beginning to fear that they might never see that cheer in her again.

In a rare display of tact, Precht had once commented to them in private that she shouldered too much responsibility in the company of those more than a decade her senior. But if such a sentiment had ever reached her ears at all, it certainly never made it to her heart.

"In that case…I need to ask for a favor," Mavis said. Her expression flickered between uncertain gratitude and seriousness, settling on the latter. "Two, actually."

"You are the guild master here, First," Precht reminded her, changing his form of address.

"No," she refuted. "You are. The council will request for the presence of the master at some point. I've invited questions with my absence, I imagine, and appearing in this form before them would only raise more suspicions." She smiled. "You've been carrying out my duties for over a year now. You are more than ready, if you would allow yourself to believe it."

"But –" Precht spread his hands before him in protest. "What about _you_?"

"That's the thing," she said. "You need to announce me dead."

Precht actually choked for a second at that, a rare look on him.

"Say _what_ now?" Yuriy asked in his stead.

"It's for the best," Mavis said, with finality. There was no arguing with her when she used that tone. "You'll have to mark a grave for me… This is the holy grounds of our guild. A good place to rest undisturbed, after I have passed on…"

The wistful note in her voice was…somewhat alarming.

"We will see to it." Precht looked surprisingly even-keeled. It was more than Yuriy could say for himself. "We understand that with this spell…"

"Do you really?" Mavis asked, quiet.

They exchanged a look with each other. "I didn't mean…" He began, cautiously.

A strained expression came over her face. The image before them flickered for a brief second.

"Sorry – I'm still new at this," she said apologetically. The air seemed to twist and shiver before them, trailing down with sparks signature of her magic.

"Is something wrong?"

Mavis glanced back behind her shoulder without answering. The window behind her opened to a direct view of the front yard they had just passed through, parallel with the green canopy that had shaded them on the way. He was about to ask her what the matter was, again, when the scenery shifted right before his eyes.

The trees appeared as if they had been stripped down to bare skeleton in an instant. Bared in its true appearance, any welcoming ambivalence offered during their entrance had vanished.

She had been cloaking the sight from them with her illusion, since the very first moment of their visit. They never even suspected it. He could feel shame creeping up at the realization.

An errant branch was strewn towards the open window, close enough to almost stretch within the building itself. Yuriy reached towards it, glancing towards Mavis in askance. She did not stop him.

The blackened wood broke apart in his grip without a sound. Black dust smeared into his fingers and fell in a loose shower.

"You haven't seen this curse in action," she said, when they looked to her again. "It's not exactly…subtle. Dark magic of this caliber means to be used or to be pursued – probably both. Would you expect history to treat me with the same kindness as you do, if that happens?"

She added in an undertone, when neither of them replied, "One of us is more than enough."

Yuriy let out a sharp burst of breath.

Mavis had never made light of it in writing, but somehow, the truth of the matter had stubbornly eluded him. He – or rather all of them – had so wanted to believe that things would return to the way they were, the moment news of her came around. It had been easier, perhaps, to think of this as a condition that could be remedied somehow, as long as they took the right measures to counter it.

He hadn't expected her to tell them that nothing could _ever_ be the same again, when she did show up. That she would need to go to such lengths just to arrange for a simple meeting, and find it necessary fake her own death to protect this small measure of peace she could find – for all of the foreseeable future.

She was right, when she said that they did not really understand. Even now, he couldn't bring himself to imagine living the way she must have.

"Don't look so gloomy." She smiled, and there was a hint of her old radiance to it. Perhaps he was just seeing what he wanted to, again – but the rest of her words extinguished that notion quickly.

"With the necessary precautions in place…a way to limit this visage to members with our guild mark, maybe. Then I'll just need to figure out how to send this projection far enough and maintain it. Just you wait – before the year is over, you'll be sick of me popping over to check on how badly you're babysitting."

Yuriy groaned to cover the way his heart had almost leapt hard enough to send him keeling over. "You _heard_ that?"

"Is that possible?" Precht asked at the same time. "You are…well, dead. Technically."

Yuriy suppressed the urge to kick him in the shin. It was conveniently armored, so he had only ended up stubbing himself the last time he tried.

"As long as you don't act too strange around a ghost that's haunting your halls." She smiled at them, wry.

"Yeah. That's – that's good. That's really great," Yuriy said, relieved. "We'll look into that too. Your – uh – grave, and this. Light magic isn't our specialty, so it might take a while, but really, this isn't much of a favor at all –"

"Not quite," Mavis said. Her smile widened a little, and he definitely wasn't imagining the sly slant to her eyes, this time. "It's nice of you to offer, but…between us, we could probably manage it before you, anyway."

At Precht's questioning look, she ducked her head with reflexive shyness again.

Coming to think of it, that was probably what had piqued his curiosity and got suspicions running, before they even learned the true name of their teacher.

She lifted her head, and said to them, "There's an old friend I want to introduce to you."

* * *

"You'll have to talk to them yourself someday, you know. Actually, properly talk. Not just…stand in the distance and look on awkwardly while we talk. It's…kind of sad, to be honest?"

Zeref let out a huff of breath, closing his eyes in defeat. "I'm aware."

"Really," she tried to sound encouraging, "they're probably more scared of you than the other way round."

"You know you're…not really helping, right?"

"Just give them a bit of time," Mavis insisted, unerringly optimistic. "You'll see."

"You seem to think that the only problem here is…" He contemplated for a moment. "In name."

"I'm just saying that it might not be as bad as you're convinced it is. You are our teacher. In a sense, you are as much a founder as we are." She smiled, warmly. "We used to talk about you, during the anniversary celebrations…or whatever they tried to call their excuses to get rowdy. They kept wondering how I found you at a time we needed you most."

"They remembered me?"

"Don't sound so surprised," she said with a hint of reprimand.

Even though it had kind of made her want to kiss him.

She picked at a loose pebble with her toe and flicked it towards the water instead. Waves nipped gently at her feet as the ship shrank towards the far horizon. The sight seemed to have stolen some of her breath along with it, the further it traveled – and simultaneously, breathed a paradoxical life into her being.

It was a promising, almost relieving kind of forlornness. She never knew that parting was capable of making one feel so _alive_.

"I wrote my letter," she said, following up on her verbal nudge with a physical one. "It's your turn now. No backing out this time."

The raven bird swooped down from the sky and circled around them a few times, before deciding that it was safe to perch on her shoulder. She fought down the instinctive urge to coil away, stretched out a little to accommodate it. It made itself comfortable in short order, before proceeding to send Zeref a baleful look, like it was trying to back up her point.

"I wasn't intending to," he said, a tad too defensive.

She prodded at the animal carefully. It didn't feel warm to the touch, but the way it jumped back to avoid her fingers was distinctively annoyed. "What's its name?"

"There…isn't one." He had the grace to look guilty about it, at least. "This is an early prototype for living magic. I only started using it for this purpose after Alvarez was established."

"…That's _three centuries_ ago, Zeref," she said incredulously, affronted on its behalf. "Hermes? Hermes it is," she decided.

The creature tilted its head curiously, before it seemed to decide on revising its opinion of her slightly upwards. It went back to preening itself, visibly puffing up a little in pride.

"Good name." He studied the bird, which was now steadfastly ignoring him. "It's going to like you more than me now, isn't it?" He wondered.

"You should be grateful they never thought about asking it to peck you until you reply."

Zeref let out a quiet, startled laugh. "Stop giving it _ideas_. I said I would write back."

"Soon would be nice," she said airily, burying any doubts on whether she was being pushy for good.

"I know," he said. "With Yuriy's state of health…"

Mavis glanced up sharply, all traces of humor gone. "You know what's going on with him?" Hermes let out a startled sound and took flight again at the tone she took. She watched it go, not quite able to summon the space for guilt.

Neither Yuriy nor Precht had breathed a word on the matter, even when she brought it up herself. She hadn't wanted to contradict them, with her tenuous hold on the magic already limiting the time she had. But now that they had left, she couldn't shake the lingering feeling that she should have pried the truth out of them while she had the chance.

"I am not a trained healer. I can't give a definitive claim just by looking from that distance, even if I were. But from the sound of it…he's been pushing his limits ever since the incident. Overtaxing one's magical abilities for a prolonged period could potentially damage the ethernano container permanently, and with it their life force."

Yuriy could still travel here to meet them. The thought flailed through her mind, frantic. Whatever it was, _it can't be that serious_ –

"It wouldn't help to jump to conclusions. The mind isn't entirely separate from the body, unless…" He glanced down, presumably referring to their own condition. "Grief alone could do damage enough."

"But I've met them now. It can…he _has to_ get better, from now on," she muttered. "He can recuperate from this, right?"

"He can," he assured her. "They must have dragged him to the physicians already. If he hasn't been able to put his heart into it…he will now." He paused. "What medicine can do for magical afflictions is still limited, as far as I am aware of. I thought…it wouldn't hurt to invest on another avenue of research, just in case."

Mavis nodded, heaving out a sigh of relief.

"Thank you," she said in earnest.

Zeref met her eyes. "I think," he said with surprising initiative, "we're rather past that."

"We are," she agreed. "You said that you were grateful, to have met me. I haven't said it then, but I want you to know – I feel the same way. You are the best thing that happened to me."

She placed her hands in his, lacing their fingers together.

The refutations did not come.

"This curse _isn't_ on you. I'll say it as many times as it takes for you to believe. Don't make an enemy of yourself – don't make it easier for them.

"What you've told me, before…I know you don't believe that your own reunion will be a happy one. But it doesn't have to happen that way. There is a future for you, too. I know it's tempting to believe in the worst, but – hold on to faith, would you? It's stayed with you for this long.

"And don't ever doubt that I'll be there with you, when it happens."

A long stretch of silence fell in its wake. She listened. The sea rose and retreated on the pebbled shore, falling together like a song composed from a language lost.

His fingers tightened around hers.

"Then let's live," he said, "together."

* * *

 ** _If you have been brutally broken, but still have the courage to be gentle to others, then you deserve a love deeper than the ocean itself._**

 ** _– Nikita Gill_**


End file.
